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.
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.;