You can’t read the ending of Little Britches: Father and I Were Ranchers without also feeling compelled to read Man of the Family. But if you’ve only ever read Little Britches, we highly recommend reading Man of the Family, as well. There are so many unresolved questions at the end of the first book that the reader longs to know what becomes of the Moody family. Fortunately, Ralph wrote an entire series to answer all of those questions!

The second book offers a revealing glimpse into the life of a family that has lost a loved one and must pull together to survive. We see all of them grow – not just Ralph.  We also see the family’s relationships with one another strengthen in the face of their tragedy.

If you haven't read any of Ralph Moody's books, but have younger children who did enjoy Farm Stories, Ox-Cart Man, or any other stories about horses and homesteading, you may want to look into reading both Little Britches and Man of the Family at some point in the future. 

A more somber story

Man of the Family has a markedly different tone than Little Britches since it addresses how the family moves forward after the death of their father. In many ways it is a much more somber story. Although Ralph was only 11 years old when his father died, his mother comes to him in confidence after the funeral, and tells Ralph that he is now the man of the family. Ralph begins to behave in accordance with this responsibility, despite his young age and despite the challenge of providing for his many siblings and mother.

Finding inventive ways to make a living

One of the most interesting aspects of this second book is to see how enterprising the entire Moody clan is. Ralph sets up a number of business ventures both independently and with the help of his siblings. These businesses include recruiting his schoolmates to help him herd cattle, building stilts for himself and his younger siblings so that they are all tall enough to pick fruit from cherry trees, selling Christmas trees, breeding rabbits, hauling railroad ties, selling fresh milk and their mother’s New England cookery, and even riding in cow horse races!

When Ralph first learns that his mother needs him to live at home (meaning he can no longer work during the summers at the Y-B ranch with his cowboy friends), he feels disappointment, but he is extremely inventive in seeking out other ways to make a living for his family. The family even goes into a lucrative curtain laundering business for a Denver hotel together!

Ralph and his sister Grace, who is ​two years older, undertake many of these projects together without involving their mother, in hopes of quietly helping her out. Of course Little Britches still finds time to enjoy himself, but the focus of his life has shifted away from riding horses for pleasure to supporting his family. He grows up in this book, and becomes, as the title suggests, the man of the family.

As his siblings also grow up, we see more of them than we did in the first book and see Ralph act as a kind of father figure to them, passing on the very skills his father taught him.

The Moody’s place in their community

We also see in this book just how beloved the Moody family is by their community. After Mr. Moody dies, all of their neighbors go out of their way to help them out, whether that be loaning them a purebred milk cow, or the shopkeeper throwing in some of his finest cuts of meat with the rest of their groceries as “a gift for the dog.”

Living by principle

Ralph takes to heart the lessons his father taught him before he died, and begins to live and work in accordance with those principles. This means that he gives each man he works for his money’s worth, always stands “above board,” and tells the truth.

One of the things Ralph Moody does particularly well is to address moral dilemmas in a way that doesn’t feel heavy-handed. Like most of us, Ralph is far from perfect. In the first book, we saw him lie to his father and witnessed the conversation that ensued between them afterward about our house of character. In the second book, he becomes frustrated and raises his voice at his mother. She lets him finish, then gently reminds him that his father never raised his voice at her. Ralph is quick to take note, vows never to do this again and keeps his word.

Later in this book, Ralph encounters a dilemma about whether or not to stretch out a job for several more hours, because he believes the job is worth the extra wages. But in the end he remembers what his father taught him and makes the right decision.

Although Ralph frequently feels pulled in different directions and even tempted, he has been given the tools to make the right and moral choice. Best of all, he exposes us to his thought processes as he struggles. I think that showing children examples of how people work through moral dilemmas (of whatever magnitude) is important, and this book does just that in a warm and good-humored sort of way.

Living by faith

Their family is also one of a deep faith. From the very opening of the first book, we see them place their trust in God whenever they encounter difficulties. No matter how dire their situation seems, they always find that God provides for them in unexpected ways. The morality that is so integral to their family’s ethos is rooted in their religious beliefs and experiences, which they refer to frequently throughout the series.

Share your experience

Do you have a favorite example of a literary character who strives to live by principle and/or live by faith? Please let us know in a comment below!

In the past we’ve written about books that we’ve read and loved as children. Today, however, we’re hoping that you all, our readers, will share some of your favorite memories of reading with us!

So, without further ado, do you remember what book it was that you first fell in love with? What memories do you have of reading it for the first time?

Was it one of the first books you were able to select for yourself at the library? What about the first book you read independently? Perhaps it was a book you read as a child that changed the course of your life. Maybe you had a beloved teacher or relative whom you remember reading aloud to you, or maybe you remember staying up late with a flashlight to keep reading under the covers in secret. Maybe you even read a favorite book for the first time by candlelight during a power outage!

Whatever it was, we would love to hear the title of the book you first fell in love with, and what you most remember about reading it. Please let us know in a comment below — we can’t wait to hear from you!

Today’s post is an excerpt from Introduction to the Use of Books and Libraries by Fay and Eaton. It attempts to answer the question “Why Read Fairy Tales?” Fay and Eaton offer seven compelling reasons for why children should read fairy tales. These reasons span from cultivating the imagination to teaching by parable, and more. In addition to these reasons, Fay and Eaton also offer examples of stories that illustrate each principle in question. Many of these stories are ones we have published online at Gateway to the Classics. Some are classics that you likely have already have heard of.  Others, however, are more obscure titles.

We wanted to share this excerpt with you because we ourselves have found it to be helpful and thought-provoking. Most of us know that reading fairy tales is important for children. We also know that most children seem to adore reading or listening to fairy tales. But we may not always consider why it's so very beneficial for children to read them. Fay and Eaton do an excellent job in this passage of articulating exactly why that is the case!

The excerpt begins below:

First, fairy tales cultivate the imagination.

Imagination enriches, adding a never failing charm to the dullest and most sordid surroundings and giving us the means of escape from the commonplace.

Second, fairy tales broaden the mental horizon.

​Many a child whose daily life seems of the narrowest and most prosaic kind, has found through the fairy tale all the wonder and mystery of

"Songs the sirens never sung
  Shores Ulysses never knew."

Third, fairy tales deepen and enlarge a child's emotional experience.

He thrills with pride as the little tailor gets the better of the giant; he holds his breath in suspense as the last mantle is thrown over the eleventh swan brother, he shudders before the locked door in Bluebeard's Castle; and as a result, he is all his life more sensitive to the appeal of "brave romance," wherever he may find it.

Fourth, fairy tales develop a sense of humour.

Some children possess this sense in a much higher degree than others. This is apparent to the story-teller who often finds one child listening without a smile to the tale that has drawn a series of appreciative chuckles from others. For the child who takes life seriously, perhaps a little anxiously, or for the stolid youngster, such stories as the The Three Sillies, Lazy Jack, Mr. Vinegar, or Hans in Luck are all excellent training in the perception of humour. Nearly all the old folk tales, and, in particular, the Drolls (to which class belong the four tales mentioned) are full of a vigorous and spontaneous humour. Uncle Remus's genial fun awakens a ready response. The literary fairy tale, when really excellent, is invaluable.

More examples

It is often said that a child cannot fully appreciate the clever fooling of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, but while he is eagerly following Alice's adventures he is laying, unconsciously, the foundation for an appreciation of humour in literature. Kipling's Just So Stories, have a similar value. Howard Pyle's fairy stories in The Wonder Clock, and Pepper and Salt, are full of humour and are told with a delightful drollness, irresistibly appealing. Stockton's stories, The Bee-man of Orn, The Clocks of Rondaine, and others, are full of a humorous fancy.

Thackeray's The Rose and the Ring belongs to the older children, who are leaving the fairy tale age behind them. They can appreciate its delightful absurdity without being puzzled by its burlesque quality. Of this book Andrew Lang said that he thought it "quite indispensable in every child's library, and that parents should be urged to purchase it at the first opportunity, as without it no education is complete."

Fifth, indirectly and without preaching, fairy tales teach the child many priceless lessons.

​Teaching by parable is a time-honored method. Children especially need concrete examples, not abstract generalizations. Many are the lessons of truthfulness, temperance, courtesy, and generosity which the fairy tale brings home, while the qualities of greed, cruelty, and laziness are held up to ridicule. To a child there are no shades in conduct, bad is bad, and good is good; hence, the clear black and white of the old fairy tale is peculiarly satisfying. The prompt dispensation of reward and punishment appeals to his sense of justice.

If the adult has forgotten how he felt as a child when he came to the end of the fairy story, let him reread the conclusion of Martin Chuzzlewit. Mr. Pecksniff, with "a disconcerted meekness on his face . . . enormously ridiculous," Mr. Pecksniff completely unmasked by the old man he would have tricked and wronged and, moreover, laid flat on the floor by a blow from this same irate old gentleman's stick, while Martin, Tom Pinch, Mary, Ruth and Mark Tapley stand by as witnesses of the discomfiture of hypocrisy, gives us the same pleasurable sensation, as did the summary disposal of the wicked step-mother.

Sixth, fairy tales counteract certain unfortunate tendencies of modern life.

The constant bustle and hurry, the daily papers with their glaring headlines, the theatrical bill-boards and moving picture posters, the moving pictures themselves, all tend to make the modern child more sophisticated than the young person of an earlier day, and to keep him living at a high tension. He will crave the dramatic fairy tale, therefore, but however full of giants and ogres and exciting rescues of princesses this tale may be, the atmosphere is a healthy one, neither morbid, nor vulgar, nor encouraging precociousness.

Seventh, there is no better introduction to poetry.

​In the letter to Coleridge quoted above, Lamb says: "Think what you would have been now if instead of being fed with Tales and old wives' fables in childhood, you had been crammed with geography and natural history!" The atmosphere of the fairy tale, its "high hill among the trees of the forest, where the fox and the hare bid each other good night"; its talking beasts and flowers; its lakes and mountain caverns prepare a child for the magic of the great poets. "We cannot all hope to be classical scholars, but all may be steeped in folk-lore and heroic romance in childhood, when the imagination is fresh and keen and so acquire a share of the old-world culture."

An excerpt from Introduction to the Use of Books and Libraries
by Fay and Eaton

Share your experience

Why do you read fairy tales with your children or students? Why did you read them as a child? Can you think of benefits to reading fairy tales that we didn't include on this list? Please share your experience with us know in a comment below. We love hearing from our readers!

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