The Winter Oak: Summary

Set in Russia, a young boy called Savushkin, was constantly late for his school lessons. A new teacher Anna Vasilevna, notices this and decides to confront him as to the reasoning behind his lateness.

• Anna talks to Savushkin privately asking to see his mother, he says gladly, innocently, not fully realising why at first. He invites her to meet his mother
• Savushkin walks Anna through the forest path, towards his house. He points out all the nature and beauty of the forest to Anna, explaining it to her when she did not understand
• Savushkin leads Anna to the Winter Oak. She realises why Savushkin is constantly late, but eventually accepts that it is appropriate for Savushkin to walk through the forest

Games at Twilight: Summary

Set in India, a family of children and a mother, they live in a hot, dry, arid part of the country

• The children are let out to play at the end of the day, whilst the mother relaxed
• The heat of the day is portraying death, as the children enter the garden filling the place with fun and noise the garden seems to spring to life.
• They begin to play hide and seek, leaving to find their hiding places; it becomes quite again, Ravi, one of the youngest children, decides to find the ‘perfect’ hiding spot. Finding it in a shed, he hides throughout the game until all the others have been caught
• Ravi finally revealed himself to the others reaching ‘Den’ after the game had finished
• However the other children did not care, they had forgotten him
• The story concludes when Ravi finally realises how insignificant he is

Leela’s Friend: Summary

• Mr Sivasanker hires a new servant called Sidda after his daughter, Leela, approves of him 
• Leela becomes attached to Sidda more and more every day. Leela made Sidda play games with her, she enjoyed playing teacher with him; this shows role-reversal as Sidda is uneducated
• One day Leela and Sidda go out shopping and when they return Leela’s mother notices Leela’s gold chain is gone
• Leela’s mother accuses Sidda of stealing the necklace and threatens to call the police but when she goes out of the room for a second he vanishes into the night
• That night Leela questions where Sidda is and blames herself and her family
• A few days late the police catch Sidda and brings him to the household
• Sidda still denies stealing the chain but they do not believe him and he is taken back to the station
• A few days later Leela’s mother finds the chain in the tamarind pot and Leela explains she put it in there a few days earlier before Sidda was taken, naïve to the trouble she has caused
• Her father says he will go down and tell the police that Sidda is innocent but he says he still wouldn’t have a criminal in the house

The Red Ball: Summary

Bolan is a young boy who came from Tunapuna and moved to Port of Spain because of his father’s work.

• Bolan is in the square when some boys ask for him to play with them he ignores them not wanting the nicknames to stick, 
• “Aye..Thinny Boney!...In his childish way, the boy had understood that if he answered to any of the names they coined for him, he would have to live with it forever.”
• He is sitting by himself by the fountain and admires the statue of the man thinking of it as a father figure
• One of the other children come up to him and asks his name. After a pause Bolan replies hesitantly and returns to his day dreaming
• After a while Bolan joins in with the boys. They then ask him to play tomorrow after seeing how good he is;  this shows him fitting in
• They go to eat black pudding but Bolan disappears after knowing he cannot afford it, he doesn’t want to accept a free sample because of the way he has been brought up
• When Bolan arrives home his father drunkenly interrogates him and accuses him of being selfish and ungrateful but his mother defends him
• Later his father insinuates that Bolan is the cause of them being in poverty
• The next day Bolan steals money from the savings can and uses it to buy a red ball then buys his ‘friends’ black pudding after the game; he is doing it to fit in and attempting to impress them
• His father comes to get him and drags him to the carpenter’s yard, once there then he beats him and shouts at him. His mother still defends him and stops the beating she understands the his position
• When he goes to bed he dreams that the fountain statue talks to him; the statue symbolises his father