2007 Printable Manual - Texas State Library and Archives ...

Sail Away With Books!
WIFE: If you really loved me, you would ask the fish to grant me this. Please, husband, dear,
please. Pretty please, pretty please with sugar on it, pretty please with sugar and honey on it,
pretty please….
FISHERMAN: (interrupting) Okay, okay. I will ask the fish for a palace if it will make you
happy.
WIFE: Thank you, dear. I’m so excited. Go right now and ask him.
(Fisherman returns to the pier.)
FISHERMAN: Prince of the sea, please listen to me.
Honorable fish, grant me one more wish.
FISH: (appearing from the sea) Ah, my friend the fisherman. Did your wife send you to thank
me for her fabulous new mansion?
FISHERMAN: I am sorry to come to you again. My wife would like to be a queen. She asks for
a magnificent palace. I don’t know what to think. She used to be thoughtful and loving. Now she
only thinks about her palace, clothes, jewels, and parties. She has so much, yet she is no longer
happy. Oh, fish, I wish we could be happy again.
FISH: My friend, you have a kind and generous heart. You have asked for many wishes for your
wife, yet you have not asked for your own heart’s desire. What do you want?
FISHERMAN: I wish life were the way it used to be. We lived simply, but we were happy.
FISH: I will grant your wish, fisherman. You will return to life as it used to be. Your wife was
blinded by greed but you gave in to her demands. Both of you need to remember what is really
important in life.
(Fish dives back into the sea.)
FISHERMAN: And so I returned home to find my dear wife once more in our tumbledown
shack. No palace, no mansion, not even a large and beautiful house. But I have my wife back the
way she used to be. She is loving.
WIFE: Hans, dear, welcome home. How was your day? (gives Hans a big kiss)
FISHERMAN: And thoughtful.
WIFE: (happily) Hans, there was a beautiful sunrise this morning. I painted a picture of it to
hang on the wall.
FISHERMAN: Once again, she is my princess.
WIFE: (hugging Hans) Oh, Hans! And you are my prince!
FISHERMAN: (together) And we are happy!
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