Storyteller

# LEARNING ENGLISH: lower intermediate level # Storytellers # Little Monsters 1) Once upon a time in England, there was a scarecrow. He stood in a field and looked like a man, but he wasn’t a real man. The scarecrow was made of straw. His head was an old football with a painted face: two eyes, a nose, and a smiling mouth. He didn’t have hair but wore a brown felt hat that a farmer used to wear long ago. 2) His clothes also came from the farmer: a long brown coat with lots of pockets, an old pair of jeans with holes in the legs, a worn-out leather belt with a rusty buckle, and a red scarf with white stripes. 3) The scarecrow didn’t have shoes because he didn’t have feet. A wooden pole kept him standing in the ground, and he never moved. The scarecrow liked being in the field. He saw the Sun come up every morning, watched the clouds drift across the sky, and at night, he gazed at the Moon and counted the stars. 4) He enjoyed his job of scaring away the crows, the big, clever black birds that made trouble on the farm by stealing seeds and pecking at the vegetables. The scarecrow knew that without him, nothing would grow at all. But this year, the scarecrow had a problem. 5) The farmer had stuffed him full of new, clean, yellow straw, which made a good body. The scarecrow was very happy as his coat fitted him much better now, and he felt smart. However, the crows were building nests and had spotted the new straw, which was perfect for them. 6) Three crows sat on a fence and looked at the scarecrow. One crow decided to get some straw for his nest and flew across the field, landing on the scarecrow. He pulled out some straw and flew back to his nest. The other two crows followed suit, and all day long, they stole more and more straw. 7) The scarecrow couldn’t stop them as he couldn’t move or shout effectively. By the end of the day, he was looking thin and worried about what to do if the crows returned the next day. A tiny voice offered help. It was a mouse sitting on his belt buckle. 8) The mouse suggested scaring the crows away with the help of his friends. The scarecrow was skeptical but agreed to try the mouse’s idea. The next day, the three crows returned. As the first crow landed on the scarecrow, twenty mice jumped out of the scarecrow’s clothes, roaring and waving their arms to appear big and scary. 9) The crow flew back in horror, claiming a monster attacked him. The second crow also tried and was scared away by the mice. The third crow, seeing his friends’ reactions, decided he had enough straw and flew away. 10) The scarecrow was overjoyed and thanked the mice. The mice asked to stay in his warm and comfortable pockets, and the scarecrow happily agreed, calling them his little monsters.