Little Red Hen

The Little Red Hen is an American fable first collected by Mary Mapes Dodge in St. Nicholas Magazine in 1874. The story is meant to teach children the importance of hard work and personal initiative. In this book this story is retold and Illustrated by Florence White Williams. The story is as follows : "A hen living on a farm finds some wheat and decides to make bread with it. She asks the other farmyard animals for help planting it, but they refuse. The hen then harvests and mills the wheat into flour before baking it into bread; at each stage she again asks the animals for help and they refuse. Finally the hen has completed her task and asks who will help her eat the bread. This time the animals accept eagerly, but the hen rebuffs them stating that, just as she made the bread herself, she will eat the bread herself, and runs away with the bread."