By: Charles Kingsley, Jessie Willcox Smith Shamed by his grimy appearance in the presence of an immaculate little girl, ten-year-old Tom — an ill-treated London chimney-sweep — promptly runs away. Diving into a river, he enters a magical underwater world of fairies and other whimsical creatures who teach him about truth, mercy, justice, courage, and other virtues. Although Charles Kingsley's fable can…
By: Andrew Lang The Yellow Fairy Book is a wonderful collection of tales from all over the world. There are such familiar old favorites as the "Story of the Emperor's New Clothes," "The Tinder-box," "How to Tell a True Princess," and "The Nightingale." There are less familiar tales by Madame d'Aulnoy and from the collections of Andersen and Grimm. Many tales…
French novelist Jules Verne — "the man who invented the future" — captured and intensified the human impulse to explore the world's hidden regions. This prophetic 1870 adventure novel, centering on a fabulous underwater craft commanded by the brilliant and mysterious Captain Nemo, was written well before the development of the deep-water submarine. Combining marvelous scientific achievements with common, everyday events, the…
By: Dorothy Canfield Fisher Nine-year-old Elizabeth Ann has been raised in the city by loving but overprotective aunts who speak in disapproving whispers of "those horrid Putney cousins." So imagine the child's shock when she's forced to move in with the dreaded country kin. They keep pets in the house! They eat in the kitchen and expect her to walk to school…
