Presumably written as a resource for absolute beginners, Take a Bow!, by Nina Czitron, is a series of 25 stories proceeded by five basic warm-ups.
If you’re looking for easy stories to turn into plays and for some reason have never heard of such classics as The Three Little Pigs and Goldilocks then this is the book for you! Okay, yes, that was my poor attempt at sarcasm. Honestly, this book is not very helpful, even for beginners.
Each story is broken into sections, with each section interrupted by italicized suggestions like “Make sure Goldilocks puts on her hungry face and her tired face as she walks through the performance space.†And “Make sure she gobbles up the last one as ravenously as possible (it will usually make all the children laugh and will often help if you do it, too).†Similarly useless directions are in every story. In fact, this book is written in such a way as to encourage exactly those things which are neither effective nor educational in theatre with young children: dictating their choices and going for cheap laughs.
Even the section “End-of-year-plays†is a set up for a product over process experience. The author states that an end-of-year play “will give your students a sense of closure on the school year.†This is a false statement: it gives their parents and teachers a sense of closure, not the children. Students this young are perfectly happy–and will learn more–in an environment where they are encouraged to make their own interpretive choices, including how to show emotions and characters using their bodies. Should this lead to an informal “sharing†if parents arrive early for pick-up, children will then feel a sense of pride at sharing their new experiences with their families. But creating a play as a structured (and therefore judged), dictated, and inflexible event with such young children is not something I would recommend.