Books like Stone Soup
By Ann McGovern
For the kid who loves a good trick almost as much as a good meal, this is the story that makes generosity feel like a game worth playing. Sly, warm, and quietly triumphant.
During hard times in a Florida forest, a girl named Calpurnia sets off with her little dog to find enough fish to feed her hungry family and neighbors, guided by a mysterious tip from the forest's wisest old woman.
Three traveling monks arrive in a war-weary village where suspicious neighbors hide their food and shutter their windows — until the monks offer to make soup from nothing but stones.
Every night at six o'clock, a City Watch commander reads his little boy a farmyard picture book about cows and lambs, then starts reimagining it as a story about the city streets his son will actually grow up in.
Three hungry soldiers march into a French village where every scrap of food has been hidden, so they announce they'll make soup from nothing but water and stones — and talk the wary townspeople into adding just a little more.
Two scarecrows, Betty O'Barley and Harry O'Hay, fall in love and plan a wedding in the fields, gathering the farm's animals and birds to help them celebrate.
A young girl finds a box of yarn that never runs out and knits sweaters for everyone and everything in her gray town — until a greedy archduke decides he wants the box for himself.
A little girl moves to a new town and finds a park named for butterflies — except none live there, so she rallies neighbors to help bring them home.
A girl who left her homeland as a baby must draw it for a school assignment, so she gathers memories from family and neighbors to imagine her way back to The Island.
A young cartographer leaves behind hand-drawn maps of his old neighborhood — the school, the chicken coop, the best skylight spot for a bed — as a gift for the next child moving into his house.
A book-loving man's whole life is scattered by a tornado, leaving him stranded in a gray, joyless place — until a single colorful book leads him to a library that needs him as much as he needs it.
A broke, clever hare strikes a deal with a rich, lazy bear who'd rather sleep than farm: split the crops tops and bottoms, and let the harvest decide who really comes out ahead.
A girl named Nora hears a tapping tentacle at her window and discovers a giant octopus living on her apartment roof, helping neighbors with chores — until one morning he's simply gone.
