345J: Young Girl Decries Dangers of Reading When Chased by a Bull

Read this book when I was around 8, which puts it at 1960.  I am sure it was not new at that time.

Written by someone like Thurber or Ogden Nash, it was a collection of children’s short stories.  The only one that I can remember clearly was about a little girl who couldn’t read. At the end, when she is being chased by a bull, she comes to the conclusion that reading (words?) are dangerous.  The sign she couldn’t read said something  like, ‘beware of  bull.’

Hoping you can help me.

1 thought on “345J: Young Girl Decries Dangers of Reading When Chased by a Bull

  1. Ann

    This must be Hilaire Belloc’s ‘Cautionary Tales’. The one you mention must be ‘Sarah Byng, Who Could Not Read and Was Tossed into a Thorny Hedge by a Bull’. The last lines are ‘The lesson was not lost upon/ The child, who since has always gone/ A long way round to keep away/ From signs, whatever they may say/ And leaves a padlocked gate alone./ Moreover, she has wisely grown/ Confirmed in her instinctive guess/ That literature breeds distress.;

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