The Child’s first picture book, A poetic look into children’s picture books from a time gone by. A scanned pdf, with beautiful illustrations, and poetic versus, and formatted with one page of text opposing the illustrations. First published 1933, by an experimental psychologist, an educator, and written with the help of one hundred nursery children …

A Tale of Two Cities, An Epic tale which needs no introduction. This is a Project Gutenberg recreation. By: Charles Dickens   Text from A Tale of Two Cities Chapter I – The Period It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age …

Raggedy Ann Stories, abridged and adapted from the original, contains 13 short stories about the classic rag doll and her friends. The text is from the US government English language department and is accompanied a picture glossary, and questions to aid comprehension. The language has been simplified for high-beginning level English language learners (with vocabulary …

A beautiful rendition of the classic Sanskrit tale (stories with morales), The Magic Pitcher, complete with illustrations and comprehension / inferential questions. Sample Text from The Magic Pitcher Long, long ago there lived far away in India a woodcutter called Subha Datta and his family, who were all very happy together. The father went every …

The Wind in the Willows is a children’s novel by Kenneth Grahame, first published in 1908. Alternately slow moving and fast paced, it focuses on four anthropomorphised animals in a pastoral version of Edwardian England. The novel is notable for its mixture of mysticism, adventure, morality and camaraderie, and celebrated for its evocation of the …

Many years before TS Elliot’s popular collection of poems, and many years before Andrew Lloyd Weber popularised it in the broadway musical, was The Book of the Cat. A beautifully illustrated well written collection of short storeys and poems about cats, including The Great Panjandrum, Snowball, and Mr Twinkletoes. Any cat person will identify with …

The Call of the Wild – A tale of frontier days in the Yukon gold rush and the relationship between a sled dog, his keeper, and the call of the wild. by: Jack London   Text from The Call of the Wild   Excerpt: BUCK did not read the newspapers, or he would have known that …

This is a classic humor for elementary children about how the narrator’s father and a friendly stray cat go in search of an imprisoned young dragon. On the way deceiving the wild animals who want to stop him or eat him, or both, with cute tricks and traps. Hilarious imagery results as the animals give …

Huckleberry Finn, the Mark Twain classic, was written using a variety of period related southern dialects, which make it very colourful and an interesting piece of history but also very hard to read for younger readers or ESL students. This version has been edited to provide the story in a modern easier to read language. …

The Velveteen Rabbit – In this classic tale of a much loved toy, Margery Williams explains the magic behind toys and how they become real. Note: The Velveteen Rabbit is an open source book, that is, it is available in the public domain due to an expired (or unregistered) copyright. Although we don’t normally publish …