Welcome back, everyone, the 1001 classic short stories and tales. I've got a very special story for you today.

It's a story really about prejudice

and fear by one of my absolute favorite authors, Frank Stockton. The story is called The Griffin

and the Minor Canon. The Griffin is an animal of legend. In ancient times, he was believed to be a

spirit that lived in the woods,

and people were basically very afraid of him. A minor canon is an associate pastor in a church,

and this was actually a children's story by Frank Stockton, who gave us a lot of great children's

stories as well as adult stories.

I think we've got about 15 of them in our collection now that I've already done.

I found some interesting information. In 1963, many years after the story was written,

Maurice Sendak, who most of you know as an illustrator and writer of children's books,

was commissioned to do the artwork for this story, the Griffin and the Minor Canon.

And he wrote,

I had first to discover him, meaning Frank Stockton, as a writer.

He had always been, quite honestly, the lady or the tiger man. I had never read

anything else. Reading the griffin and the minor canon was very much like opening a treasure chest.

What a gold mine of pictorial possibilities. And it provides a thoroughly fascinating series of

illustrating problems. I wondered at all costs to thoroughly fascinating series of illustrating problems.

I wanted at all costs to avoid the serious pitfall of illustrating with pictures

what the author had already, so wonderfully, with words done.

I hoped, rather, to let the story speak for itself, with my pictures as a kind of background

music, music in the right style, in the best taste, and always in tune with the words.

...