Anyone who teaches, lead, or speaks in public has had the experience of needing to fill short amounts of time in order to hold the audience’s attention. The challenge is familiar to Margaret Read MacDonald, who for thirty-five years told stories to preschoolers every week. Here are more than eighty simple, short, pithy tales for many occasions: holidays, museum tours, history or nature walks, public speaking, media appearances, school visits, curriculum boosters. These traditional tales come from China, west Africa, Mexico, Japan, Thailand, Turkey, Syria, Cuba, the Ukraine, India, eastern Europe, and the Jewish, native American, and African-American traditions.