Retold from: Florence Holbrook

Florence Holbrook was an American teacher and Chicago school principal who retold myths and nature tales for schoolchildren.

She was born in 1860 in Peru, Illinois, taught for many years and ran a school in Chicago. Holbrook died in 1932.

“The Book of Nature Myths” (1902) explains in short stories why animals and plants are the way they are. The evergreen tale comes from that book. Where the story first came from is not known, so it is simply a nature tale as Holbrook retold it.

Here you can read “Why the Spruce and the Pine Stay Green”: about a little bird with a hurt wing whom the proud trees turned away, while the spruce, the pine and the juniper took her in for the winter.