Hay for My Ox and Other Stories: A First Reading Book for Waldorf Schools Paperback – October 15, 2012

A great book for third graders. The language is rich, the illustrations lovely and the stories carry a beautiful truth and simplicity. My class loved it as our class reader.

This is a great reader for kids in second grade. After this, we moved on to her seven year old wonder book.

A lovely book for first readers! It contains lovely stories and verses that will captivate young readers and delight them with timeless images and beautiful language.

I like some of the stories but some are too graphic for me.

I bought this for use in our home Waldorf studies for Grades 1 and 2. I have enjoyed Isabel Wyatt's other titles for my children as new fairy tales, with better imagery, outcomes and circumstances than Grimm's or Andersen's, and often clearer, though unspoken moral lessons. This one is, well, not as good as I expected. The pictures, while classically Waldorf, will seem to many people simple, unskillful, and even muddy (and the one of "elves" actually would have looked a bit like scary ghosts to me as a child). It doesn't help that many are not in color. I enjoyed a few of the stories told by Isabel Wyatt (especially Hay for My Ox and the Tree of Three Cries) but the stories, if meant to be read by the child, are not as simple, short, or using short words, as I would expect in a first reader, though there is some of the repetition of phrases that makes these, like other Wyatt stories, such good tales to be told aloud. This may have been a much needed book when it was first published in 1968--we will keep it and use it but I think that there may now be better waldorf early readers out there. Though I may change my mind when we start to use it. I dislike the pictures more than I do the text, though I agree with another reviewer that the story about the ox and the ass, and the poem about the hare have somewhat disagreeable content. (the hare was shot at, but happily discovered it was alive, jumped up and ran away--doesn't sound too far from a children's game!)

I purchased this book for my daughter (who attends waldorf school), and am returning it . Out of the 13 stories- not even one !! of the human characters is female.Two of the stories have female animals-- 1 sheep, 1 bird. Most stories emphasizing hierarchy , and sibling rivalry all highlighting medieval attitudes.... Even the animal stories… one about an ox whose friend the ass convinces him to refuse to pull the cart, the result being "the farmer says that if you are too mad to pull the ox- cart, he may as well kill you" One 'sweet' poem about shooting a rabbit. Horrible!

wonderful stories and my daughter agrees!

Die Geschichten im Buch sind in einer wunderbaren Sprache geschrieben.Dazu sind die Bilder schön gestaltet und ansprechend. Es bleibt Platz für Fantasie

Many lovely stories as Isabel Wyatt writes them.