Chicken Soup for the Kid’s Soul Read Online Free PDF

park bench. She sat there for a long time, thinking, until it grew dark. All of a sudden, she saw the way. This plan would work. She would make it work.
    When she walked into her house, her father was on the phone. He hung up immediately. Her mother was sitting with an anxious expression on her face. The moment Cindy walked in, her mother called out, “Where have you been? We’ve been worried to death!”
    Cindy didn’t answer. Instead she walked up to her mother, gave her a kiss right on the cheek and said, “I love you, Mom.” Her mother was so startled that she couldn’t speak. Cindy marched up to her dad. She gave him a hug. “Good night, Dad,” she said. “I love you.” And then she went to bed, leaving her speechless parents in the kitchen.
    The next morning when she came down to breakfast, she gave her mother a kiss. She gave her father a kiss. At the bus stop, she stood on tiptoe and kissed her mother.
    “Bye, Mom,” she said. “I love you.”
    And that’s what Cindy did, every day of every week of every month. Sometimes her parents drew back from her, stiff and awkward. Sometimes they laughed about it. But they never returned the kiss. But Cindy didn’t stop. She had made her plan. She kept right at it. Then, one evening, she forgot to kiss her mother before bed. A short time later, the door of her room opened. Her mother came in.
    “Where’s my kiss, then?” she asked, pretending to be cross.
    Cindy sat up. “Oh, I forgot,” she said. She kissed her mother.
    “I love you, Mom.” She lay down again. “Good night,” she said and closed her eyes. But her mother didn’t leave. Finally she spoke.
    “I love you, too,” her mother said. Then her mother bent down and kissed Cindy, right on the cheek. “And don’t ever forget my kiss again,” she said, pretending to be stern.
    Cindy laughed. “I won’t,” she said. And she didn’t.
    Many years later, Cindy had a child of her own, and she kissed that baby until, as she put it, “Her little cheeks were red.”
    And every time she went home, the first thing her mother would say to her was, “Where’s my kiss, then?” And when it was time to leave, she’d say, “I love you. You know that, don’t you?”
    “Yes, Mom,” Cindy would say. “I’ve always known that.”
    M. A. Urquhart
Adapted from an Ann Landers column

The Visit
There isn’t much that I can do,
But I can share an hour with you,
And I can share a joke with you. . . .
As on our way we go.
Maude V. Preston
    Every Saturday, Grandpa and I walk to the nursing home a few blocks away from our house. We go to visit many of the old and sick people who live there because they can’t take care of themselves anymore.
    “Whoever visits the sick gives them life,” Grandpa always says.
    First we visit Mrs. Sokol. I call her “The Cook.” She likes to talk about the time when she was a well-known cook back in Russia. People would come from miles around, just to taste her famous chicken soup.
    Next we visit Mr. Meyer. I call him “The Joke Man.” We sit around his coffee table, and he tells us jokes. Some are very funny. Some aren’t. And some I don’t get. He laughs at his own jokes, shaking up and down and turning red in the face. Grandpa and I can’t help but laugh along with him, even when the jokes aren’t very funny.
    Next door is Mr. Lipman. I call him “The Singer” because he loves to sing for us. Whenever he does, his beautiful voice fills the air, clear and strong and so full of energy that we always sing along with him.
    We visit Mrs. Kagan, “The Grandmother,” who shows us pictures of her grandchildren. They’re all over the room, in frames, in albums and even taped to the walls.
    Mrs. Schrieber’s room is filled with memories, memories that come alive as she tells us stories of her own experiences during the old days. I call her “The Memory Lady.”
    Then there’s Mr. Krull, “The Quiet Man.” He doesn’t have very much to say; he just listens when