Arthur Read online

  Enough of this, he thought at the end of a slippery day. And he took to the air in a dizzy flight home.

  The snows went, and came and went again. Finally Arthur awoke one morning to find a warm breeze blowing. People who walked beneath his statue seemed to feel it, too. Their coats flapped open. They walked slowly. They had lost their winter hunch.

  Arthur flew among tree branches and saw small green buds.

  “I feel suddenly light in heart,” he said to himself.

  But that night the weather was cold as ever.

  “Can one ever trust Mother Nature?” Arthur asked woefully before he fell asleep.

  After that the days really did grow warmer. They seemed longer than those that had gone before. Tree buds began to swell. One day Arthur brought a large bud to the man who fed him. One good turn deserves another, Arthur thought as he made his presentation. The old man smiled.

  Warm days continued. There was much rain. Puddles became plentiful.

  One morning Arthur was considering himself in a particularly fine puddle when he heard loud chirping in the air above him. He looked up. The birds had returned.

  “Arthur,” all the birds chattered, “is that really you?” They landed. “Yes,” they agreed, “it is the same old Arthur, puddle and all.”

  Arthur thought. Then he said quietly, “No, I am not the same Arthur at all. I am a bird who has played in the mist, danced in the snow, written a poem, and feasted on crumbs each day. I am a bird who has lived through a strange and a cold and a wonderful time.”

  The birds could not really listen. They were too full of their southern adventures. They gleefully chattered and chirped and flapped about on the grass.

  “You don't look well, Arthur,” commented a chubby bird finally. “Not well at all. What a pity you could not be with us. Think what joy you missed.”

  Arthur, still peering happily into his puddle, thought, I had best be a modest bird and not talk of all that I have seen. Such tales can wait for another day. The birds chattered on and on.

  When they grew tired, they looked once more toward the puddle. But Arthur was not there! Arthur was riding the roads of Central Park. He was gazing at himself in the taillight of a hansom cab.

  He was enjoying himself immensely!

  RHODA LEVINE is the author of seven children’s books and is an accomplished director and choreographer. In addition to working for major opera houses in the United States and Europe, she has choreographed shows on and off Broadway, and in London’s West End. Among the world premieres she has directed are Der Kaiser von Atlantis by Viktor Ullmann and X—The Life and Times of Malcolm X and Wakonda's Dream, both by Anthony Davis. In Cape Town she directed the South African premiere of Porgy and Bess in 1996, and she premiered the New York City Opera productions of Janácek’s From the House of the Dead, Zimmermann’s Die Soldaten, and Adamo’s Little Women. The New York Review Children’s Collection publishes her books Three Ladies Beside the Sea and He Was There from the Day We Moved In, both illustrated by Edward Gorey.

  Levine has taught acting and improvisation at the Yale School of Drama, the Curtis Institute of Music, and Northwestern University, and is currently on the faculty of the Manhattan School of Music and the Mannes College of Music. She lives in New York, where she is the artistic director of the city’s only improvisational opera company, Play It by Ear.

  EVERETT AISON is a co-founder of the School of Visual Arts Film School in New York and the former art director of Grossman Publishers. He has written several produced screenplays and designed the opening titles for numerous films, including Akira Kurosawa’s Yojimbo and Roman Polanski’s Knife in the Water. In addition to Arthur he has illustrated the children’s book The American Movie and in 2006 published his first novel, Artrage.