Start Classics Series

This first of nine volumes accurately translating the wonderful tales of the Arabian nights.

This fifth of nine volumes accurately translating the wonderful tales of the Arabian nights.

When the gentle woodcarver Geppetto builds a marionette to be his substitute son, a benevolent fairy brings the toy to life. The puppet, named Pinocchio is not yet a human boy. He must earn the right to be real by proving that he is brave, truthful, and unselfish. But, even with the help of Jiminy, a cricket who the fairy assigns to be Pinocchio's conscience, the marionette goes astray. He joins a puppet show instead of going to school, he lies instead of telling the truth, and he travels to Pleasure Island instead of going straight home. Yet, when Pinocchio discovers that a whale has swallowed Geppetto, the puppet single-mindedly journeys into the ocean and selflessly risks his life to save his father, thereby displaying that he deserves to be a real boy.

This fourth of nine volumes accurately translating the wonderful tales of the Arabian nights.

This second of nine volumes accurately translating the wonderful tales of the Arabian nights.

This sixth of nine volumes accurately translating the wonderful tales of the Arabian nights.

This seventh of nine volumes accurately translating the wonderful tales of the Arabian nights.

Travel back to a mythical time when Achilles, aided by the gods, waged war against the Trojans. And join Odysseus on his journey through murky waters, facing obstacles like the terrifying Scylla and whirring Charybdis, the beautiful enchantress Circe, and the land of the raging Cyclôpes. Using narrative threads from The Iliad and The Odyssey, Padraic Colum weaves a stunning adventure with all the drama and power that Homer intended.

In the train, even before St. John's was passed, a touch of inevitable reaction had set in, and Rogers asked himself why he was going. For a sentimental journey was hardly in his line, it seemed. But no satisfactory answer was forthcoming -- none, at least, that a Board or a Shareholders' Meeting would have considered satisfactory. The old vicar spoke to him strangely. "We've not forgotten you as you've forgotten us," he said. "And the place, though empty now for years, has not forgotten you either, I'll be bound." Rogers brushed it off. Just silliness -- that was all it was. But after St. John's the conductor shouted, "Take your seats! Take your seats! The Starlight Express is off to Fairyland! Show your tickets! Show your tickets!" And then the forgotten mystery of his childhood came back to him. . . .

Penrod sat morosely upon the back fence and gazed with envy at Duke, his wistful dog. A bitter soul dominated the various curved and angular surfaces known by a careless world as the face of Penrod Schofield. Except in solitude, that face was almost always cryptic and emotionless; for Penrod had come into his twelfth year wearing an expression carefully trained to be inscrutable. Since the world was sure to misunderstand everything, mere defensive instinct prompted him to give it as little as possible to lay hold upon. Nothing is more impenetrable than the face of a boy who has learned this, and Penrod's was habitually as fathomless as the depth of his hatred this morning for the literary activities of Mrs. Lora Rewbush—an almost universally respected fellow citizen, a lady of charitable and poetic inclinations, and one of his own mother's most intimate friends. Mrs. Lora Rewbush had written something which she called "The Children's Pageant of the Table Round," and it was to be performed in public that very afternoon at the Women's Arts and Guild Hall for the benefit of the Coloured Infants' Betterment Society. And if any flavour of sweetness remained in the nature of Penrod Schofield after the dismal trials of the school-week just past, that problematic, infinitesimal remnant was made pungent acid by the imminence of his destiny to form a prominent feature of the spectacle, and to declaim the loathsome sentiments of a character named upon the programme the Child Sir Lancelot.

Contains the following stories: THE PHANTOM 'RICKSHAW MY OWN TRUE GHOST STORY THE STRANGE RIDE OF MORROWBIE JUKES THE MAN WHO WOULD BE KING "THE FINEST STORY IN THE WORLD"

Pollyanna is a best-selling 1913 novel by Eleanor H. Porter that is now considered a classic of children's literature, with the title character's name becoming a popular term for someone with the same optimistic outlook.

This eighth of nine volumes accurately translating the wonderful tales of the Arabian nights.

This last of nine volumes accurately translating the wonderful tales of the Arabian nights.

A djinn, sealed in a jar for three thousand years, has been found by Horace Ventimore, a young and not very flourishing architect. Upon his release the djinn expresses his gratitude by seeking to grant his benefactor's every wish--generally with results the very opposite to those desired!

A collection of fables credited to Aesop, a slave and story-teller believed to have lived in ancient Greece between 620 and 560 BCE.

This third of nine volumes accurately translating the wonderful tales of the Arabian nights.

This book was written in 1915, for the amusement of my wife and myself at a time when life was not very amusing; it was published at the end of 1917; was reviewed, if at all, as one of a parcel, by some brisk uncle from the Tiny Tots Department; and died quietly, without seriously detracting from the interest which was being taken in the World War, then in progress.

Short stories of everyday doings on a farm in all of which the same "three happy children" appear. Simpy and naturally told. For children from five to nine years.

The Adventures of Maya the Bee is an exciting tale for children of all ages. It is the story of Maya, a rebellious little bee who flies from the hive in search of adventure and encounters her own heroism. Themes of growth and development of courage and wisdom are found, as well as the extreme joy and satisfaction that Maya experiences in the beauty of creation and all creatures. Her ultimate and innate loyalty to her Nation of Bees unfolds in the final heroic scenes. This story gives us the delightful sense of having seen a small segment of the world through a Bee’s eyes.

With the Arden family castle in ruins and the family treasure lost for generations, Edred Arden is graced with the chance of a lifetime just prior to his tenth birthday. When he inherits the title of Lord he discovers that if he can find the lost family treasure before he turns ten, it will be his. With his sister Elfrida at his side, Edred sets out on a magical time-travelling quest to restore the House of Arden to its former glory. Fans of Edith Nesbit will delight in this wonderful children's story of fantastical adventure.

Ethel Turner (1872 -1958) was an Australian novelist and children's writer. She started her writing career at eighteen with her sister Lillian, with whom she founded the Parthenon, a journal for young people. Originally published in 1894. Seven Little Australians gives an authentic taste of Australian childhood in the Sydney of the 1890s. Captain Woolcot strains to uphold his standards of decency while his spirited, assertive daughter resists them. The alliances among his children heightens the battle, yet tightens family bonds. The sequels The Family at Misrule (1895) and Little Mother Meg (1902) deal with the lives of the Woolcot family, particularly with its seven mischievous and rebellious children.

Published in 1919, The Camp Fire Girls Solve a Mystery, or, the Christmas Adventure at Carver House is the 58th book written in The Camp Fire Girls series.

On the shores of Long Lake the dozen girls who made up the Manasquan Camp Fire of the Camp Fire Girls of America were busily engaged in preparing for a friendly contest and matching of skill that had caused the greatest excitement among the girls ever since they had learned that it was to take place. For the first time since the organization of the Camp Fire under the guardianship of Miss Eleanor Mercer, the girls were living with no aid but their own. They did all the work of the camp; even the rough work, which, in any previous camping expedition of more than one or two days, men had done for them. For Miss Mercer, the Guardian, felt that one of the great purposes of the Camp Fire movement was to prove that girls and women could be independent of men when the need came. It was her idea that before the coming of the Camp Fire idea girls had been too willing to look to their brothers and their other men folks for services which they should be able, in case of need, to perform for themselves, and that, as a consequence, when suddenly deprived of the support of their natural helpers and protectors, many girls were in a particularly helpless and unfortunate position. So the Camp Fire movement, designed to give girls self-reliance and the ability to do without outside help, struck her as an ideal means of correcting what she regarded as faults in the modern methods of educating women.

This lively Camp Fire group and their Guardian go back to Nature in a camp in the wilds of Maine and pile up more adventures in one summer than they have had in all their previous vacations put together. Before the summer is over they have transformed Gladys, the frivolous boarding school girl, into a genuine Winnebago.

The long train, which for nearly an hour had been gliding smoothly forward with a soothing, cradling motion of its heavy trucked Pullmans, and a crooning, lullaby sound of its droning wheels, came to a jarring stop at one of the mountain stations, and Lieutenant Allison wakened with a start. The echo of the laugh that he had heard in his dream still sounded in his ears, a tantalizing, compelling note, elusive as the Pipes of Pan, luring as a will-o'-the-wisp. Above the bustle of departing and incoming passengers, the confusion of the station and the grinding of the wheels as the train started again that haunting peal of laughter still rang in his ears, still held him in its thrall, calling him back into the dream from which he had just awakened. Still heavy with sleep and also somewhat light-headed—for he had been traveling for two days and the strain was beginning to tell on him, although the doctors had at last pronounced him able to make the journey home for a month's furlough—he leaned his head against the cool green plush back-rest and stared idly through half-closed eyelids down the long vista of the Pullman aisle. Then his pulses gave a leap and the blood began to pound in his ears and he thought he was back in the base hospital again and the fever was playing tricks on him. For down in the shadowy end of the aisle there moved a figure which his sleep-heavy eyes recognized as the Maiden, the one who had flitted through his weeks of delirium, luring him, beckoning him, calling him, eluding him, vanishing from his touch with a peal of silvery laughter that echoed in his ears with a haunting sweetness long after she and the fever had fled away together in the night, not to return. And now, weeks afterward, here she stood, in the shadowy end of a Pullman aisle, watching him from afar, just as she had stood watching in those other days when he and the fever were wrestling in mortal combat.

Published in 1914, The Camp Fire Girls on the March, or Bessie King's Test of Friendship is the 21st book written in The Camp Fire Girls series.

What a wonderful funny book about a little boy growing up in Tennessee. Frances Calhoun wrote in the conversational southern language of the early 20th century. Episodes include: "The Rabbit's Left Hind Foot", "A Green Eyed Billy" and, "Education and Its Perils." After the author's death, later books in this series were written by Emma Sampson.

The Lost Prince is a novel by British-American author Frances Hodgson Burnett, first published in 1915 following Marco Loristan, his father, and his friend, a street urchin called "The Rat" working to overthrow the cruel dictatorship in the kingdom of Samavia.

"Speaking of diaries," said Gladys Evans, "what do you think of this for one?" She spread out a bead band, about an inch and a half wide and a yard or more long, in which she had worked out in colors the main events of her summer's camping trip with the Winnebago Camp Fire Girls. The girls dropped their hand work and crowded around Gladys to get a better look at the band, which told so cleverly the story of their wonderful summer. "Oh, look," cried "Sahwah" Brewster, excitedly pointing out the figures, "there's Shadow River and the canoe floating upside down, and Ed Roberts serenading Gladys—only it turned out to be Sherry serenading Nyoda—and the Hike, and the Fourth of July pageant, and everything!" The Winnebagos were loud in their expressions of admiration, and the "Don't you remembers" fell thick and fast as they recalled the events depicted in the bead band.