A Little, Aloud

by Angela Macmillan

  Dorothy Whipple (1893–1966)

  Also try: ‘Saturday Afternoon’. See: The Closed Door and Other Stories (Persephone Books, 2007).

  Walt Whitman (1819–92)

  Also try: ‘O Captain! My Captain!’, ‘When I Heard the Learn’d Astronomer’, ‘O Me! O Life!’. See: The Works of Walt Whitman (Wordsworth, 1995).

  Tobias Wolff (1945–)

  Also try: ‘Firelight’, ‘Flyboys’. See: The Night in Question (Bloomsbury, 1997), Our Story Begins: New and Selected Stories (Bloomsbury, 2009).

  William Wordsworth (1770–1850)

  Also try: ‘Stepping Westward’, ‘She Dwelt Among the Untrodden Ways’, ‘Old Man Travelling’. Longer poems: ‘Michael’, ‘Lines Composed a Few Miles Above Tintern Abbey’, ‘Intimations of Immortality’. Penguin, OUP, Wordsworth all have editions of Wordsworth’s poetry in print.

  W. B. Yeats (1865–1939)

  Also try: ‘The Lake Isle of Innisfree’, ‘The Song of Wandering Aengus’, ‘He Wishes For the Cloths of Heaven’. See: Collected Poems of W. B. Yeats (Wordsworth, 2000).

  Acknowledgements

  Every effort has been made to trace and contact all copyright holders. If there are any inadvertent omissions or errors we will be pleased to correct these at the earliest opportunity.

  Fleur Adock: ‘For a Five-Year-Old’, from Poems 1960–2000 (Bloodaxe Books, 2000). Reprinted by permission of the publisher.

  Hilaire Belloc: ‘Rebecca’, from Cautionary Tales for Children (Harcourt Brace, 2002). Copyright © Hilaire Belloc, 1907. Reprinted by permission of PFD (www.pfd.co.uk) on behalf of The Estate of Hilaire Belloc.

  Laurence Binyon: ‘The Little Dancers’, from Modern Verse 1900–1940 (Oxford University Press, 1940). Reprinted by permission of The Society of Authors as the Literary Representatives of the Estate of Laurence Binyon.

  Elizabeth Bowen: ‘The Demon Lover’, from Collected Stories of Elizabeth Bowen (Vintage, 1999). Copyright © The Estate of Elizabeth Bowen, 1945. Reprinted by permission of Curtis Brown Group Ltd, London, on behalf of the Estate of Elizabeth Bowen.

  Christy Brown: ‘The Letter A’, from My Left Foot (Vintage, 2008). Reprinted by permission of The Random House Group Ltd.

  George Mackay Brown: ‘The Fight in the Plough and Ox’, from Winter Tales (Polygon, 2006). Reprinted by permission of Polygon, an imprint of Birlinn Ltd.

  Morley Callaghan: ‘All the Years of Her Life’, from The Complete Stories, Volume One, pages 1–8, published by Exile Editions © 2003. ‘The Snob’, from The Complete Stories, Volume Two, pages 16–22, published by Exile Editions © 2003.

  Bruce Chatwin: extract from On the Black Hill (Vintage, 1999). Reprinted by permission of The Random House Group Ltd.

  Anton Chekhov: ‘A Work of Art’, from Love and Other Stories (Dodo Press, 2006). Reprinted by permission of A. P. Watt Ltd on behalf of the Executor of the Estate of Constance Garnett.

  Gillian Clarke: ‘Miracle On St David’s Day’, from Selected Poems (Carcanet Press Ltd, 1996). Reprinted by permission of the publisher.

  Walter de la Mare: ‘The Listeners’ and ‘Silver’, from The Complete Poems of Walter de la Mare (Faber, 1975). Reprinted by permission of The Literary Trustees of Walter de la Mare and the Society of Authors as their representative.

  Eleanor Farjeon: ‘A Christmas Carol’, from Sing for Your Supper (Michael Joseph, 1938); ‘It Was Long Ago’, from One Hundred Years of Poetry for Children, edited by Michael Harrison and Christopher Stuart-Clark (OUP, 2000). Reprinted by permission of David Higham Associates Ltd.

  Penny Feeny: ‘At the End of the Line’, first published in The Reader (issue 15, 2004). Reprinted by permission of the author.

  Robert Frost: ‘The Road Not Taken’, from The Poetry of Robert Frost, edited by Edward Connery Lathem. (Jonathan Cape, 1971). Reprinted by permission of The Random House Group Ltd.

  Joanne Harris: ‘Faith and Hope Go Shopping’, from Jigs and Reels (Doubleday, 2004). Reprinted by permission of The Random House Group Ltd. E-book rights granted from Henry Holt and Company, LLC, Publishers, New York.

  Robert Hayden: ‘Those Winter Sundays’, from Collected Poems of Robert Hayden, edited by Frederick Glaysher (Liveright, 1985). Copyright © 1966 by Robert Hayden. Reprinted by permission of Liveright Publishing Corporation.

  Seamus Heaney: ‘Digging’, from Opened Ground: Selected Poems, 1966–1996 (Faber, 2002). Reprinted by permission of the publisher.

  Tove Jansson: ‘The Cat’, from The Summer Book (Sort Of Books, 2003). Copyright © 1972 by Tove Jansson. First Published in Swedish (as Sommarboken) by Schildts Förlags Ab, Finland. English translation by Thomas Teal. All rights reserved.

  Elizabeth Jennings: ‘Friendship’, from New Collected Poems (Carcanet Press, 2002). Reprinted by permission of David Higham Associates Ltd.

  Brian Keenan: ‘The Swimmer’, from I’ll Tell Me Ma (Jonathan Cape, 2003). Reprinted by permission of the author.

  Doris Lessing: ‘Flight’, from The Habit of Loving (MacGibbon and Kee, 1957). Copyright © 1957 by Doris Lessing. Reprinted by kind permission of Jonathan Clowes Ltd, London, on behalf of Doris Lessing.

  Alan Marshall: ‘Trees Can Speak’, from How’s Andy Going? (F.W. Cheshire, 1956). Reprinted by permission of Pearson Australia.

  Roger McGough: ‘What Does Your Father Do?’, from Everyday Eclipses (Viking, 2002). Copyright © Roger McGough 2002. Reproduced by permission of PFD on behalf of Roger McGough.

  Siegfried Sassoon: ‘ Everyone Sang’, from Collected Poems (Faber, 1984). Reprinted by kind permission of Barbara Levy Literary Agency.

  Vernon Scannell: ‘Incendiary’, from Of Love and War: New and Selected Poems (Robson Books, 2002). Reprinted by permission of the publisher.

  Dylan Thomas: ‘A Child’s Christmas in Wales’ (Orion, 1986). Reprinted by permission of David Higham Associates Ltd.

  R.S. Thomas: ‘Rich’ from Collected Later Poems 1988–2000 (Bloodaxe Books, 2004). Reprinted by permission of the publisher.

  John Wain: ‘Message for The Pig-man’, from Nuncle (Macmillan, 1960). Reprinted by permission of The Estate of John Wain.

  Dorothy Whipple: ‘The Handbag’, from The Closed Door and Other Stories (Persephone Books, 2007). Reprinted by permission of David Higham Associates Ltd.

  Tobias Wolff: ‘Powder’, from Our Story Begins (Bloomsbury, 2009). Reprinted by permission of the publisher.

  THANKS

  The Reader Organisation is extremely grateful to all copyright holders who so big-heartedly waived or reduced their fee because they knew that all royalties for the book would go to the charity.

  We should like to offer our thanks and appreciation to Emma Hayward for her dedicated hard work in pursuit of permissions.

  Many thanks to Lisa Spurgin for all the hours she spent typing up the stories.

  Sincere thanks to Mary Lundquist for her charming illustrations, so generously donated.

  We are indebted to Becky Hardie at Chatto and Windus for her guidance and expertise as well as her belief and support for the whole project.

  Finally, thanks and cheers to the great readers in the Get Into Reading groups; in particular those at Hoylake Cottage and Granville Court, Wallasey. Their sense of adventure, courage, application and enthusiasm over the past three years has been the inspiration for this anthology.