The Story of the Wind and the Sun

The North Wind was always boasting of his great strength and how his strength makes him better that everything else. One day the Sun argued that there was great power in gentleness and challenged the wind in a contest of power.

Far below, a man traveled a winding road. He was wearing a warm winter coat. The sun challenged the wind to see who could force the coat of the man bellow. The wind bragged "It will be quite simple for me to force him to remove his coat." So he started to blow so hard, the birds clung to the trees. The world bellow was suddenly filled with dust and leaves. But the harder the wind blew down the road, the tighter the shivering man clung to his coat.

The sun patiently waited until the wind grew too tired to blow and when he was the Sun came out from behind a cloud. He warmed the air and the frosty ground so much that the man on the road unbuttoned his coat. The longer the sun gently shone the warmer the world became and soon the man felt so hot, he took off his coat and sat down in a shady spot.

"How did you do that?" said the Wind. "It was easy," said the Sun, "I patiently waited until you were done then I lit the day and through gentleness I got my way."

Suitability

This is the shortest of the stories I researched and I fear it may be too short to create a decent length performance. The story is also about personified weather and so to turn them into a physical beings on stage, they would be very abstract and might be confusing to the kids. However I find the story teaches a few good morals that I feel the children can benefit from hearing, the morals include the importance of patience and how being gentle can be beneficial. The story also follows the generic conventions of a children's story, there is a good character (the sun) and a bad one (the wind). the story line is basic so there is a beginning, a complication (the bet) and a resolution with the good character victorious. This generic story structure I feel is good for the children as it is something they will be familiar with and happy with.