Lazy Matilda, and Other Tales

In the title story, lazy Matilda abandons her chores and tumbles into an adventure with a dwarf and a grateful cat who will change her life. In "The Witch and the Truant Boys," a trio of mischief-makers must outwit a sorceress using nothing but their wits. A boy with an enormous sweet tooth learns the hard way why moderation matters in "The Sweet Tooth." Katharine Pyle wrote these tales in the early 1900s, when children's stories were not afraid to be a little dark and a lot clever. Each story is a small moral universe where cleverness outwits laziness, kindness defeats selfishness, and children regularly best the adults around them. The writing has a gentle read-aloud quality, with verse in the opening tale that rolls off the tongue. These are not sanitized lessons but rather charming, slightly old-fashioned adventures that feel like finding a dusty book of fairy tales your grandmother loved.