Bailey - The Cooky Valentine - Keeping the Public in Public Domain

 

A blogger I follow gave a warning to "Make your reservations NOW as Valentine's day falls on a Saturday!" I say now is also a good time to look for a Valentine's Day story.  Carolyn Sherwin Bailey often anthologizes holidays, so I'm not surprised to find she offered stories on the theme, but I liked best her story from an unusual book, Stories for Sunday Telling. In her Preface she says the book's purpose is to bring home "certain moral and spiritual facts" and goes on to say "Each leads in its scope and plot to an important life lesson which children will easily grasp and feel and apply." 

WELL! That's probably not what you expect in a Valentine's Day story. 

Never fear, this story isn't preachy.It does manage to bring in all that is needed to make a cookie. At the same time I wasn't overly happy with the name of the girl who receives the cookie. "Dear Heart" is horribly dated (just like spelling cookie as cooky). If I was telling it to only one child I would change it to that child's name. For a group I would just pick a name.

 

 

 

 

May your Valentine's Day be sweet, with or without cookies,, and filled with stories.

 

*************** 

This is part of a series of postings of stories under the category, “Keeping the Public in Public Domain.” The idea behind Public Domain was to preserve our cultural heritage after the authors and their immediate heirs were compensated. I feel strongly current copyright law delays this intent on works of the 20^th century. My own library of folklore includes so many books within the Public Domain I decided to share stories from them. I hope you enjoy discovering them.

At the same time, my own involvement in storytelling regularly creates projects requiring research as part of my sharing stories with an audience.  Whenever that research needs to be shown here, the publishing of Public Domain stories will not occur that week.  This is a return to my regular posting of a research project here.  (Don't worry, this isn't dry research, my research is always geared towards future storytelling to an audience.)  Response has convinced me that "Keeping the Public in Public Domain" should continue along with my other postings as often as I can manage it.

See the sidebar for other Public Domain story resources I recommend on the page “Public Domain Story Resources."