Hello, and welcome! I am Pearl Ostrom, but almost everybody calls me Nana Pearl, even the mailman. I am 72 years old and I live in northern Wisconsin in a little house by a lake, where I have lived for forty-one years.

I have four grandchildren. Emma is 8 and wants to be a veterinarian. Sam is 6 and wants to be a garbage truck. Hazel is 4 and wants to be a cat. And Anders is 16 and made this page for me last Christmas, because I told him I was worried my stories would get lost in the kitchen drawer. He showed me how to type them in, and he made the letters big because of my eyes. So if the letters are big, that's why.

Every one of these stories I made up for one of the children, usually at bedtime, usually because something was the matter. I wrote down at the top of each one who it was for and why. You are welcome to read them to your own little ones. That is what they are for.

Once upon a time, the Moon got lonely.

It is not easy being the Moon. You have to stay up all night, every night, while everybody else is asleep. You have the whole sky to yourself, and the whole sky is very big and very quiet. The stars are too far away to talk to. The owls are busy. And the Moon had been up there so long, all by herself, that one night she decided she had had enough.

"I am going to go down and visit somebody," said the Moon.

But how does the Moon get down out of the sky? She thought and thought. And then she looked down and saw Grandpa's red barn, and leaning against the side of the red barn, she saw Grandpa's tall wooden ladder, the one he used to pick apples.

So the Moon reached down, very gently, and borrowed it.

She leaned the ladder up against the sky, and she climbed down, one rung at a time, very carefully, because the Moon has never climbed down a ladder before and it is harder than it looks. And when she got to the bottom, she went looking for a window with a little girl in it.

She found one. It was Hazel's window.

Hazel was lying in bed with her eyes wide open and the covers pulled all the way up to her nose, because it was dark, and when it was dark Hazel did not like it one bit.

The Moon tapped on the window. Tap, tap, tap.

"Who's there?" said Hazel.

"It's only me," said the Moon, and she smiled her big round smile, and her light came through the window and made a soft white square on the rug. "I was lonely. May I come and sit with you a while?"

Hazel thought about it. "Okay," she said. "But I don't like the dark."

"Oh, I know all about the dark," said the Moon, settling herself on the windowsill. "I've been out in it every night for a very long time. Shall I tell you a secret about it?"

Hazel nodded.

"The dark," said the Moon, "is only the sky resting. All day long the sky has to be blue, and hold up the clouds, and keep the sun going, and it gets very tired. So at night the sky puts on its soft dark blanket and lies down, just the way you do. The dark isn't anything scary at all. It's the whole sky taking a nap."

"Oh," said Hazel. She pulled the covers down from her nose, just a little.

"And do you know what else?" said the Moon. "Every single night, I am right up there, keeping an eye on things. On the barn, and the lake, and the apple trees, and you. Even when there are clouds and you can't see me. Even on the nights when I am very thin. I am always there."

Hazel yawned a big yawn. "Will you stay till I fall asleep?"

"I will," said the Moon.

And she did. And when Hazel was sound asleep, the Moon tiptoed back to the ladder and climbed back up into the sky, one rung at a time, very carefully, and went back to keeping an eye on things.

But she forgot to give back the ladder.

And that is why, the next morning, Grandpa could not find his apple ladder anywhere, and why, if you look up on a clear night when the Moon is full, you can sometimes see, if you squint, a little dark line going up the side of her, just the shape of a ladder, in case she ever gets lonely again.

The End
(Hazel says she can see the ladder. I believe her.)