Join us for Animal Tales !
Under normal circumstances , our Park Naturalists and volunteers come to your local library during the first week of each month to share a story about a native animal and lead a craft or activity . However , with the ever-changing circumstances involving the COVID-19 pandemic , Animal Tales may become Virtual Animal Tales on any given month this winter and spring .
( OR VIRTUAL ANIMAL TALES )
Please check with HendricksCountyParks . org , our Facebook page , or your local public library in advance of each month ’ s program for updates .
Animal Tales and Virtual Animal Tales are FREE to attend and are most appropriate for preschool to upper elementary age children . Advance registration for in-person Animal Tales is required by contacting your library .
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JANUARY Stranger in the Woods by Carl R . Sams II and Jean Stoick
Forest animals , awakened by the birds ’ warning that there is a stranger in the woods , set out to discover if there is danger and find , instead , a wonderful surprise .
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FEBRUARY Groundhog Day by Michelle Aki Becker
It ’ s February 2nd and all eyes are on Punxsutawney Phil-- the famous weather-predicting groundhog . If he sees his shadow , there are six more weeks of winter ahead . But if he does not , spring is just around the corner !
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MARCH Owly by Mike Thaler
When Owly asks his mother question after question about the world , she finds just the right ways to help him find the answers .
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APRIL The Moon Saw It All by Nancy L . Young
Ever wonder what animals do after dark ? They dance the night away at a critter ball thrown for one and all ! Children revel in a dreamy moonlit world where bobcats sing soulful songs , javelina click hooves on tortoise shell roofs and coatimundis drum right along at a critter ball thrown for one and all in .
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FOR A LIST OF YOUR LOCAL LIBRARY CONTACTS , PLEASE VISIT HENDRICKSCOUNTYPARKS . ORG !
RECOMMENDED READING
FOR ADULTS
THE FRONTIERSMAN BY ALLAN W . ECKERT
The frontiersmen were a remarkable breed of men . They were often rough and illiterate , sometimes brutal and vicious , often seeking an escape in the wilderness of mid-America from crimes committed back east . In the beautiful but deadly country which would one day come to be known as West Virginia , Kentucky , Michigan , Ohio , Indiana , and Illinois , more often than not they left their bones to bleach beside forest paths or on the banks of the Ohio River , victims of Indians who claimed the vast virgin territory and strove to turn back the growing tide of whites . These frontiersmen are the subjects of Allan Eckert ’ s dramatic history .
Against the background of such names as George Rogers Clark , Daniel Boone , Arthur St . Clair , Anthony Wayne , Simon Girty and William Henry Harrison , Eckert has recreated the life of one of America ’ s most outstanding heroes , Simon Kenton . Kenton ’ s role in opening the Northwest Territory to settlement more than rivaled that of his friend Daniel Boone . By his eighteenth birthday , Kenton had already won
frontier renown as woodsman , fighter and scout . His incredible physical strength and endurance , his great dignity and innate kindness made him the ideal prototype of the frontier hero .
Yet there is another story to The Frontiersmen . It is equally the story of one of history ’ s greatest leaders , whose misfortune was to be born to a doomed cause and a dying race . Tecumseh , the brilliant Shawnee chief , welded together by the sheer force of his intellect and charisma an incredible Indian confederacy that came desperately close to breaking the thrust of the white man ’ s westward expansion . Like Kenton , Tecumseh was the paragon of his people ’ s virtues , and the story of his life , in Allan Eckert ’ s hands , reveals most profoundly the grandeur and the tragedy of the American Indian .
No less importantly , The Frontiersmen is the story of wilderness America itself , its penetration and settlement , and it is Eckert ’ s particular grace to be able to evoke life and meaning from the raw facts of this story . In The Frontiersmen not only do we care about our long-forgotten fathers , we live again with them .
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