: L. Frank Baum
: Twinkle Tales and Policeman Bluejay
: Seltzer Books
: 9781455431014
: 1
: CHF 0.10
:
: Kinder- und Jugendbücher
: English
: 305
: DRM
: PC/MAC/eReader/Tablet
: ePUB

According to Wikipedia: 'The Twinkle Tales is a 1905 series by L. Frank Baum, published under the pen name Laura Bancroft. The six stories were issued in separate booklets by Baum's publisher Reilly& Britton, with illustrations by Maginel Wright Enright. In 1911, the six eight-chapter stories were collected as Twinkle and Chubbins; Their Astonishing Adventures in Nature-Fairyland - which is a misnomer, since Chubbins appears in only two stories and few are set in 'Nature-Fairyland'...The series was a hit; Reilly& Britton sold 40,000 copies of the little books in a short time. Such commercial success justified a sequel: Baum took his Policeman Bluejay character from the Twinkle Tale 'Bandit Jim Crow' and cast him in a separate novel, to be issued the following year.'

MR. WOODCHUCK


 

 I     The Trap

 

II    Mr. Woodchuck Captures a Girl

 

III   Mr. Woodchuck Scolds Tinkle

 

IV    Mrs. Woodchuck and Her Family

 

V     Mr. Woodchuck Argues the Question

 

VI    Twinkle is Taken to the Judge

 

VII   Twinkle is Condemned

 

VIII  Twinkle Remembers

 

Chapter I The Trap


 

"THERE'S a woodchuck over on the side hill that is eating my clover," said Twinkle's father, who was a farmer.

 

"Why don't you set a trap for it?" asked Twinkle's mother.

 

"I believe I will," answered the man.

 

So, when the midday dinner was over, the farmer went to the barn and got a steel trap, and carried it over to the clover-field on the hillside.

 

Twinkle wanted very much to go with him, but she had to help mamma wash the dishes and put them away, and then brush up the dining-room and put it in order. But when the work was done, and she had all the rest of the afternoon to herself, she decided to go over to the woodchuck's hole and see how papa had set the trap, and also discover if the woodchuck had yet been caught.

 

So the little girl took her blue-and-white sun-bonnet, and climbed over the garden fence and ran across the corn-field and through the rye until she came to the red-clover patch on the hill.

 

She knew perfectly well where the woodchuck's hole was, for she had looked at it curiously many times; so she approached it carefully and found the trap set just in front of the hole. If the woodchuck stepped on it, when he came out, it would grab his leg and hold him fast; and there was a chain fastened to the trap, and also to a stout post driven into the ground, so that when the woodchuck was caught he couldn't run away with the trap.

 

But although the day was bright and sunshiny, and just the kind of day woodchucks like, the clover-eater had not yet walked out of his hole to get caught in the trap.

 

So Twinkle lay down in the clover-field, half hidden by a small bank in front of the woodchuck's hole, and began to watch for the little animal to come out. Her eyes could see right into the hole, which seemed to slant upward into the hill instead of downward; but of course she couldn't see very far in, because the hole wasn't straight, and grew black a little way from