American
Pecos Bill
A cowboy of the tall-tale tradition who builds stories as wide as Texas — who'll tell you he lassoed a tornado and dug the Rio Grande when he wanted a drink. The fun is in how big he dares to make it.
This Week · Making Things
Making Things: if you could build anything, what would help most?
For littler ones: If you could build anything at all, what would you make?
This week we're wondering about making things — about building. Anybody can picture a thing in their head; getting it from an idea to something you can actually knock on is the harder part. So here's the question to turn over in the car or at the table: if you could build anything at all, what would help the most? Everyone at your house will reach for something different.
This week's stories
American
Sequoyah and the Talking Leaves
A Cherokee man, at a time when the U.S. was pressing his people off their land, who couldn't read or write any language, and decided to build one anyway — a whole system of writing for Cherokee, worked out symbol by symbol over years, until his own people could send words across distance on a page.
Classics
The Three Little Pigs
Three pigs, three houses — straw, sticks, and brick — and a wolf who comes to test every one. The pig who built slow and built hard is the one still standing at the end.
Talk about it
- If you could build anything at all this week, what would it be — and who would it be for?
- Pecos Bill builds tall tales, Sequoyah built a way of writing, and the pigs build houses. Are those all the same kind of building, or different kinds?
- The third pig built slower and harder than the others. When is it worth taking the longer way to make something?
A new question every week.
Listen together in the app — short audio stories for kids 4–10, at bedtime, on the drive, in the drop-off line.
Join the family
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