The Best Children S Literature

Includes indexes.

The all-time classic picture book, from generation to generation, sold somewhere in the world every 30 seconds! Have you shared it with a child or grandchild in your life? For the first time, Eric Carle’s The Very Hungry Caterpillar is now available in e-book format, perfect for storytime anywhere. As an added bonus, it includes read-aloud audio of Eric Carle reading his classic story. This fine audio production pairs perfectly with the classic story, and it makes for a fantastic new way to encounter this famous, famished caterpillar.

As The Giving Tree turns fifty, this timeless classic is available for the first time ever in ebook format. This digital edition allows young readers and lifelong fans to continue the legacy and love of a classic that will now reach an even wider audience. "Once there was a tree...and she loved a little boy." So begins a story of unforgettable perception, beautifully written and illustrated by the gifted and versatile Shel Silverstein. This moving parable for all ages offers a touching interpretation of the gift of giving and a serene acceptance of another's capacity to love in return. Every day the boy would come to the tree to eat her apples, swing from her branches, or slide down her trunk...and the tree was happy. But as the boy grew older he began to want more from the tree, and the tree gave and gave and gave. This is a tender story, touched with sadness, aglow with consolation. Shel Silverstein's incomparable career as a bestselling children's book author and illustrator began with Lafcadio, the Lion Who Shot Back. He is also the creator of picture books including A Giraffe and a Half, Who Wants a Cheap Rhinoceros?, The Missing Piece, The Missing Piece Meets the Big O, and the perennial favorite The Giving Tree, and of classic poetry collections such as Where the Sidewalk Ends, A Light in the Attic, Falling Up, Every Thing On It, Don't Bump the Glump!, and Runny Babbit. And don't miss the other Shel Silverstein ebooks, Where the Sidewalk Ends and A Light in the Attic!

A poignant, funny, and timely memoir that marries the intimacy and the sexual identity themes of Boy Erased with My Life in Middlemarch's interest in the way literature shapes and influences our lives, written in the authentic Southern voice, deeply incisive wit, and with quirky but erudite observations evocative of John Jeremiah Sullivan's Pulphead.Mark Scarbrough has been searching for something his entire life. Whether it's his birth mother, true love, his purpose, or his sexual identity, Mark has been on a constant quest to find out who he really is, with the great Western texts as his steadfast companions. As a boy with his head constantly in a book, desperate to discover new worlds, he can hardly distinguish between their plots and his own reality. The child of strict Texan Evangelicals, Mark is taught by the Bible to fervently believe in the rapture and second coming and is thus moved to spend his teen years as a youth preacher in cowboy boots. At college, he discovers William Blake, who teaches him to fall in love with poems, lyrics... and his roommate Alex. Raised to believe that to be gay was to be a sinner, Mark is driven to the brink of madness and attempts suicide. Hoping to avoid books once and for all, Mark joins the seminary, where he meets his wife, Miranda. Neither the seminary nor the marriage stick, and Mark once again finds himself turning to his books for the sense of belonging he continues to seek...In the tradition of beloved titles like The End of Your Life Book Club, Reading Lolita in Tehran, and The Year of Reading Dangerously, Bookmarked tells a deeply personal story through the lens of literature. An examination of one man's complicated, near-obsessive relationship with books, and how they shaped, molded, ruined and saved him, Bookmarked is about how we readers stash our secrets between jacket covers and how those secrets ultimately get told in the ways that the books themselves demand.

Types of Children's Literature by Walter Barnes Little Miss MuffetSat on a tuffet, Eating of curds and whey;Along came a spiderAnd sat down beside her, Which frightened Miss Muffet away. * * * * * Diddle, diddle, dumpling, my son JohnWent to bed with his stockings on;One shoe off, the other shoe on, Diddle, diddle, dumpling, my son John. * * * * * "Let's go to bed,"Says Sleepy-head; "Let's stay awhile," says Slow;"Put on the pot,"Says Greedy-sot, "We'll sup before we go." * * * * * Jack Sprat could eat no fat, His wife could eat no lean: And so betwixt them both, you see, They licked the platter clean. * * * * * There was a little girl, And she had a little curl Right in the middle of her forehead;When she was good, She was very, very good; But when she was bad-she was horrid. [Footnote: Attributed to Longfellow.] * * * * * Jack and Jill went up the hill To fetch a pail of water;Jack fell down and broke his crown, And Jill came tumbling after. * * * * * We are delighted to publish this classic book as part of our extensive Classic Library collection. Many of the books in our collection have been out of print for decades, and therefore have not been accessible to the general public. The aim of our publishing program is to facilitate rapid access to this vast reservoir of literature, and our view is that this is a significant literary work, which deserves to be brought back into print after many decades. The contents of the vast majority of titles in the Classic Library have been scanned from the original works. To ensure a high quality product, each title has been meticulously hand curated by our staff. Our philosophy has been guided by a desire to provide the reader with a book that is as close as possible to ownership of the original work. We hope that you will enjoy this wonderful classic work, and that for you it becomes an enriching experience.

Excerpt from Types of Children's Literature: A Collection of the World's Best Literature for Children, for Use in Colleges, Normal Schools and Library Schools The editor hopes that he has allotted a proportionate and equita ble amount of space and emphasis to each type, department, and section of the collection. He had it in mind, at least, to give as many pages over to poetry, for example, in proportion to prose, as many pages to fairy stories, for example, in proportion to myths, as would indicate roughly the average child's interests. If this proportion is not due and just, as the editor sometimes fears, it is to be hoped that critics will realize the web of difficulties in which such a task as this is entangled. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.

The astonishing success of J.K. Rowling and other contemporary children's authors has demonstrated how passionately children can commit to the books they love. But this kind of devotion is not new. This timely volume takes up the challenge of assessing the complex interplay of forces that have created the popularity of children's books both today and in the past. The essays collected here ask about the meanings and values that have been ascribed to the term 'popular'. They consider whether popularity can be imposed, or if it must always emerge from children's preferences. And they investigate how the Harry Potter phenomenon fits into a repeated cycle of success and decline within the publishing industry. Whether examining eighteenth-century chapbooks, fairy tales, science schoolbooks, Victorian adventures, waif novels or school stories, these essays show how historical and publishing contexts are vital in determining which books will succeed and which will fail, which bestsellers will endure and which will fade quickly into obscurity. As they considering the fiction of Angela Brazil, Enid Blyton, Roald Dahl and J.K. Rowling, the contributors carefully analyse how authorial talent and cultural contexts combine, in often unpredictable ways, to generate - and sometimes even sustain - literary success.