This classic children's book by Rudyard Kipling tells the story of Mowgli, a young boy raised by wolves: his escapades and adventures with his dear friends Bagheera the panther and Baloo the bear, his capture by the Monkey-People, his attempt at reintegration into human society, and his ultimate triumph over the lame tiger Shere Khan. The account of Mowgli's adventures is followed by several short stories, including the tales of the brave white seal, Kotick, and the tenacious mongoose, Rikki-Tikki-Tavi. Packed with adventure and Jungle Law wisdom, this book has pervaded popular culture as the basis of many film and stage adaptations, including the popular Disney movie, and through its adoption as a motivational book by the Cub Scouts.
This is the classic story of Mowgli, the young boy raised by wolves in India: his escapades and adventures with his dear friends Bagheera the panther and Baloo the bear, his capture by the Monkey-People, his attempt at reintegration into human society, and his ultimate triumph over his avowed enemy the tiger Shere Khan. Included in the book is the story of the brave white seal, Kotick, and the tenacious young mongoose, Rikki-Tikki-Tavi who battled through the night to protect his human family from a pair of sly and viscous cobras. Packed with adventure and Jungle Law wisdom, this book has pervaded popular culture as the basis of many film and stage adaptations, including the popular Disney movie.
In this novel (often mistakingly classified a children’s book) the main protagonist Buck, a St. Bernard/Collie mix, is abducted and sold to a trainer of sled dogs in Alaska. He adapts to the brutal conditions and is finally acquired by a loving man. When this new owner is killed, Buck follows the ‘call of the wild’ and joins a pack of wolves.
This is the story of Buck, dog napped from sunny California to snowy Arctic during the Alaska gold rush. This deservedly famous book has been already recorded by LibriVox and downloaded more than 100,000 times. Why, then, would anyone suggest another recording? Because this will be a Solo recording.
One of the joys of LibriVox is also a source of frustration for some listeners. That is, getting used to a narrator just in time for it to change! So, with apologies to Gordon, Kristin, Jean, and Miette, I am doing a solo.
Buck is living a happy life in California until he is sold to pay a gambling debt. Taken to the Klondike to become a sled dog, Buck must toughen up and learn the harsher rules of survival in the North. One of the first of these is how to deal with being harnessed in the same team as a dog that wants to kill him.
Large, strong and smart, Buck toughens to his new life. But even the toughest dog can be worn down by constant work, and after 3,000 miles of pulling sleds, Buck nears the end of his rope.
Cast away as no longer useful, Buck is acquired by greenhorns whose inexperience nearly kills him, but after being saved by John Thornton, he at last finds a man he can love.
Then on a remote gold-hunting expedition, Buck hears a call emanating from the woods and speaking to the wild heart of his distant ancestors. The lure of it almost balances the great love he bears for Thornton, but events take him away from his old life... and into legend.
Three Men in a Boat (To Say Nothing of the Dog), published in 1889, is a humorous account by Jerome K. Jerome of a boating holiday on the Thames between Kingston and Oxford.The book was intended initially to be a serious travel guide, with accounts of local history of places along the route, but the humorous elements eventually took over, to the point where the serious and somewhat sentimental passages now seem like an unnecessary distraction to the essentially comic novel. One of the most praised things about Three Men in a Boat is how undated it appears to modern readers. The jokes seem fresh and witty even today.The three men were based on Jerome himself and two real-life friends, George, and Harris. The dog, Montmorency, however, was entirely fictional, but, as Jerome had remarked, "had much of me in it."
Orphaned Mary Lennox is sent to live with her uncle in Yorkshire, and finds herself in a house full of secrets and mysteries.
The stories, first published in 1902, are fantastic accounts of how various natural phenomena came about. The original editions of Just So Stories were illustrated with woodcuts by Kipling himself. Read along online and see the illustrations at mainlesson.com. Each story is accompanied by a poem, in a somewhat ballad style. Many of the stories are addressed to "Best Beloved" (they were first written for Kipling's eldest daughter, Josephine, who had died during an outbreak of influenza in 1899), and throughout they use a comically elevated style inspired by the formal speech of India, full of long and improbable-sounding words, some of them made up. As a result, it is a delight to read them aloud, and easy to memorise passages from them.
These whimsical short stories offer fanciful answers to a dozen of childhood's favorite "why" and "how" questions. With their generous sprinkling of nonsense words as well as a delightfully rhythmic storytelling feel, they seem to have been written to be read aloud.
The Just So Stories for Little Children, first published in 1902, were written by British author Rudyard Kipling. They are a collection of fantastic stories, typically about how various animals came to be the way they are today.
This much-loved story follows a group of animal friends in the English countryside as they pursue adventure ... and as adventure pursues them! The chief characters - Mole, Rat, and Toad - generally lead upbeat and happy lives, but their tales are leavened with moments of terror, homesickness, awe, madcap antics, and derring-do.
Although classed as children's literature, The Wind in the Willows holds a gentle fascination for adults too. The vocabulary is decidedly not "Dick and Jane", and a reader with a love of words will find new ones to treasure, even if well-equipped for the journey. Parents will appreciate the themes of loyalty, manners, self-restraint, and comradeship which are evident throughout the book. When the characters err, they are prompt to acknowlege it, and so a reading of this book can model good behavior to children, who will otherwise be enchanted with the many ways in which the lives of these bucolic characters differ from modern life.
This book was so successful that it enabled the author to retire from banking and take up a country life somewhat like that of his creations. It has been adapted for screen, stage, and even a ride at the original Disneyland.
The classic story of how Rat, Mole, and the other river-bankers saved Toad from his excesses. This book has it all: excitement, sentiment, destruction of private property (plenty of that), paganism, and a happy ending. The prose is beautiful and occasionally requires the use of a dictionary - I had to look up “asperities.” Written as a children’s story, The Wind in the Willows is enjoyed by many grown-ups who relish Grahame’s ability to evoke the long summer days of childhood.
This much-loved story follows a group of animal friends in the English countryside as they pursue adventure … and as adventure pursues them! The chief characters - Mole, Rat, and Toad - generally lead upbeat and happy lives, but their tales are leavened with moments of terror, homesickness, awe, madcap antics, and derring-do.
Although classed as children’s literature, The Wind in the Willows holds a gentle fascination for adults too. The vocabulary is decidedly not “Dick and Jane”, and a reader with a love of words will find new ones to treasure, even if well-equipped for the journey. Parents will appreciate the themes of loyalty, manners, self-restraint, and comradeship which are evident throughout the book. When the characters err, they are prompt to acknowlege it, and so a reading of this book can model good behavior to children, who will otherwise be enchanted with the many ways in which the lives of these bucolic characters differ from modern life.
This book was so successful that it enabled the author to retire from banking and take up a country life somewhat like that of his creations. It has been adapted for screen, stage, and even a ride at the original Disneyland.
Kenneth Grahame wrote a classic children’s tale in 1908 - he penned The Wind in the Willows. He wrote of the English countryside and the beauty of it, but more than that, he showed how even the most commonplace can be extraordinary and rare. Wind in the Willows is a tale of friendship, of adventure, of foolishness and wisdom, of travel and change as well as peace and predictability; but most of all, it is a story of friendship - friendship that crosses species, ages, and professions. We all could do far worse than remember in this changing world that what changes least is that which is most true.
Black Beauty is Anna Sewell’s first and only novel. The story is told in the “first person” (or first horse) as an autobiographical memoir of a highbred horse named Black Beauty, from his carefree days as a foal on an English farm, to his difficult life pulling cabs in London, to his happy retirement in the country. Along the way, he meets with many hardships and recounts many tales of cruelty and kindness. Each short chapter recounts an incident in Black Beauty’s life containing a lesson or moral typically related to the kindness, sympathy, and understanding treatment of horses.
Black Beauty is a fictional autobiographical memoir told by a horse, who recounts many tales, both of cruelty and kindness. The title page of the first edition states that it was "Translated from the Original Equine by Anna Sewell." It was composed in the last years of her life, during which she was confined to her house as an invalid. After its publication in 1877, Sewell lived just long enough to see her first and only novel become an immediate bestseller, as well as it encouraging the better treatment of many cruelly-treated animals.
Although initially intended for people who work with horses, it soon became a children's classic. While outwardly teaching animal welfare, it also contains allegorical lessons about how to treat people with kindness, sympathy and respect. The story is narrated in the first person and each short chapter relates an incident in Black Beauty's life, with Sewell's detailed observations and extensive descriptions of horse behaviour lending the novel a good deal of verisimilitude.
Part One of Edgar Rice Burroughs’s Mars-Series. Easy, swank, pulp read about an omnipotent gentleman teleported to Mars, finding an outlandish society of ape-, tree- and lizardmen, red-, white-, yellowmen, brains on legs, strange bastions and curious apparatuses, where the strongest survives and women are needy beauties to be saved. How can something be so platitudinous and at the same time so imaginative and enthralling? Boys’ book for sure.
White Fang (1906) was written as a companion to Jack London’s successful Call of the Wild (1903). It is the tale of a wild dog born in the wild and eventually brought to civilization. The story is viewed primarily through the eyes of its canine protagonist and deals with themes of morality and redemption.
When White Fang is birthed in a cave to a wolf sire and a wolf/dog halfbreed dam, he is heir to two traditions. At first he is content to explore and learn laws of the Wild. But then his mother is caught and held by old memories of a past relationship with Man, and White Fang follows her into service with the Indians. Life among sled dogs is hardly less cruel and dangerous than living in the Wild, but brutality notches upward when his drunken master sells him to a nasty, twisted hanger-on at a riverside town of white men. He is stripped of everything soft and gentle when forced to fight to the death for a crowd of bettors.
Taming this savage spirit and reclaiming the nobility within looks impossible. Fortunately, and heart-warmingly, a man arrives in White Fang's life to try.
"White Fang" is often called the mirror image of Jack London's acclaimed "The Call of the Wild" in which a dog follows the reverse arc from tame to free.
Dating back to the 6th century BC, Aesop's Fables tell universal truths through the use of simple allegories that are easily understood. Though almost nothing is known of Aesop himself, and some scholars question whether he existed at all, these stories stand as timeless classics known in almost every culture in the world. This is volume 1 of 12.
Dating back to the 6th century BC, Aesop's Fables tell universal truths through the use of simple allegories that are easily understood. Though almost nothing is known of Aesop himself, and some scholars question whether he existed at all, these stories stand as timeless classics known in almost every culture in the world. This is volume 10 of 12.
Dating back to the 6th century BC, Aesop's Fables tell universal truths through the use of simple allegories that are easily understood. Though almost nothing is known of Aesop himself, and some scholars question whether he existed at all, these stories stand as timeless classics known in almost every culture in the world. This is volume 11 of 12.
Dating back to the 6th century BC, Aesop's Fables tell universal truths through the use of simple allegories that are easily understood. Though almost nothing is known of Aesop himself, and some scholars question whether he existed at all, these stories stand as timeless classics known in almost every culture in the world. This is volume 12 of 12.
Dating back to the 6th century BC, Aesop's Fables tell universal truths through the use of simple allegories that are easily understood. Though almost nothing is known of Aesop himself, and some scholars question whether he existed at all, these stories stand as timeless classics known in almost every culture in the world. This is volume 2 of 12.
Dating back to the 6th century BC, Aesop's Fables tell universal truths through the use of simple allegories that are easily understood. Though almost nothing is known of Aesop himself, and some scholars question whether he existed at all, these stories stand as timeless classics known in almost every culture in the world. This is volume 3 of 12.
Dating back to the 6th century BC, Aesop's Fables tell universal truths through the use of simple allegories that are easily understood. Though almost nothing is known of Aesop himself, and some scholars question whether he existed at all, these stories stand as timeless classics known in almost every culture in the world. This is volume 4 of 12.
Dating back to the 6th century BC, Aesop's Fables tell universal truths through the use of simple allegories that are easily understood. Though almost nothing is known of Aesop himself, and some scholars question whether he existed at all, these stories stand as timeless classics known in almost every culture in the world. This is volume 5 of 12.
Dating back to the 6th century BC, Aesop's Fables tell universal truths through the use of simple allegories that are easily understood. Though almost nothing is known of Aesop himself, and some scholars question whether he existed at all, these stories stand as timeless classics known in almost every culture in the world. This is volume 6 of 12.
Dating back to the 6th century BC, Aesop's Fables tell universal truths through the use of simple allegories that are easily understood. Though almost nothing is known of Aesop himself, and some scholars question whether he existed at all, these stories stand as timeless classics known in almost every culture in the world. This is volume 7 of 12.
Dating back to the 6th century BC, Aesop's Fables tell universal truths through the use of simple allegories that are easily understood. Though almost nothing is known of Aesop himself, and some scholars question whether he existed at all, these stories stand as timeless classics known in almost every culture in the world. This is volume 8 of 12.
Dating back to the 6th century BC, Aesop's Fables tell universal truths through the use of simple allegories that are easily understood. Though almost nothing is known of Aesop himself, and some scholars question whether he existed at all, these stories stand as timeless classics known in almost every culture in the world. This is volume 9 of 12.
Andrew Lang's Blue Fairy Book (1889) was a beautifully produced and illustrated edition of fairy tales that has become a classic. This was followed by many other collections of fairy tales, collectively known as Andrew Lang's Fairy Books.
In The Story of Doctor Dolittle (1920), the first of Hugh Lofting's Doctor Dolittle books, we are introduced to the good doctor who gives up treating people after Polynesia, his parrot, teaches him animal languages. His fame in the animal kingdom spreads throughout the world and soon he sets off to cure a monkey epidemic in Africa, finding all sorts of exciting adventures on the way.
This recording is of the original edition, which is in the public domain. Later editions, which are still under copyright, changed some language and plot elements that are considered racially derogatory.
This version of the classic tale of the three pigs, their houses and a wolf, published in 1904, has a new twist in its second half. This recording can be enjoyed by itself.
This anthology of poetry, published in 1904, contains such favorites as The Raven, My Shadow, and The Village Blacksmith, as well as many lovely poems that may be unfamiliar. Most of the poems in this collection are short enough for children to memorize.
This short novel of Twain’s, from 1903, is told from the point of view of a loyal and beloved family pet. Themes of heroics, valor and heart-wrenching tenderness fill this work. The story is also filled with happy events as well as sad ones and is ultimately about what dogs are to us … best friends. A Dog’s Tale is quintessentially Twain.
Librivox's weekly poetry project for the week of January 22, 2006: The Owl and the Pussycat is a famous nonsense poem by Edward Lear, first published in 1871. Its most notable historical feature is the introduction of the runcible spoon.
Peter Rabbit goes to school, with Mother Nature as his teacher. In this zoology book for children, Thornton W. Burgess describes the mammals of North America in the form of an entertaining story, including plenty of detail but omitting long scientific names. There is an emphasis on conservation.
The Burgess Bird Book for Children is a zoology book written in the form of a story featuring Peter Rabbit. Peter learns from his friend Jenny Wren all about the birds of North America, and we meet many of them in the Old Orchard, the Green Meadow, and the Green Forest.
Uncle Remus' stories feature a trickster hero called Br'er Rabbit ("Brother" Rabbit), who uses his wits to slide out of trouble and gain the advantage over the slower witted other animals, many of whom are trying to eat him. Br'er Rabbit stories were mostly collected directly from the afro-american oral story-telling tradition and are said to be a direct interpretation of Yoruba tales of Hare. This book contains 11 unique stories and was the last one published before the author's death.
Perhaps Edgar Allen Poe's most famous poem, the "Raven" is a macabre exploration of a man, his memories of Lenore, and the black bird that interrupts his studies on a dark December night, with tap-tap-tapping at his chamber door.
Carl Sandburg is beloved by generations of children for his Rootabaga Stories and Rootabaga Pigeons (which is not in the public domain), a series of whimsical, sometimes melancholy stories he originally created for his own daughters. The Rootabaga Stories were born of Sandburg's desire for "American fairy tales" to match American childhood. He felt that the European stories involving royalty and knights were inappropriate, and so populated his stories with animals, skyscrapers, trains, corn fairies, and other colorful characters.
Thornton Waldo Burgess (January 14, 1874 – June 5, 1965) was a conservationist and author of children's stories. He loved the beauty of nature and its living creatures so much that he wrote about them for 50 years. By the time he retired, he had written more than 170 books. Many of his outdoor observations in nature were used as plots for his stories. In his first book, "Old Mother West Wind," published in 1910, the reader meets many of the characters found in later books and stories. These characters include Peter Rabbit, Jimmy Skunk, Sammy Jay, Bobby Raccoon, Joe Otter, Grandfather Frog, Billy Mink, Jerry Muskrat, Spotty the Turtle and of course, Old Mother West Wind and her Merry Little Breezes. Note to parents of very small children: in Chapter 15, little Tommy Trout gets eaten by a pickerel.
The Englishman Harrison Weir organized the first cat show in England in 1871. In 1887 he founded the National Cat Club and was its first President and Show Manager until his resignation in 1890.
Our Cats and all about them is concerned with cats and all about them. It describes numerous breeds of cats and what to look for in a cat show champion, and deals with the general management and common diseases of cats, as well as how to raise healthy kittens.
But there is also a hodge podge of cat related stories, games, nursery rhymes, superstitions, as well as a list of cat lovers and a chapter of "The Cat in Shakespeare".
This story surrounds a child waif, a young woman, a young gentleman doctor, and an elderly lady. This tale unfolds the story of a bond that brings these unlikely friends together and merges their separate paths of life into one common path. The bond is "Dumps", or "Pompey", the "doggie". With many twists, turns, and uncertainties, the ending may surprise the reader. All's well that ends well in this doggie "tail".
The same beloved story of the adventures of a young horse that we all know and love, but rewritten by the author for young people. All of the pathos, tenderness and fun are still there, just written for a younger audience. While forthrightly teaching animal welfare, it also teaches how to treat people with kindness, sympathy, and respect.
The Adventures of Reddy Fox is another in the series of children’s stories by conservationist Thornton W. Burgess. In this story, Reddy and Granny Fox must outsmart Farmer Brown’s Boy who is out to get Reddy for stealing his pet chicken. Along the way, Reddy encounters many of the citizens of the Green Meadows and the Green Forest and with him we learn little lessons about life such as: the perils of being a show off; the importance of using all of one’s senses; that it is a fine thing to show sympathy and kindness to others – even our enemies; and that the value of a grandmother’s wisdom is inestimable.
We also learn that after you’ve stolen a boy’s pet chicken and he is coming your way with a gun, a shovel and a hound dog, it may be time to beat a hasty retreat.
The title of this book quotes its object. To tell something of night hunting, and especially to suggest how the ever necessary dog can best be selected, trained, maintained and utilized, is the consideration of first importance. To round out the subject all forms of hunting will receive some notice, and the various breeds of dogs will be so far dealt with, that their value and usefulness in their given fields may be determined. Best of all, the contents of this volume are based on the opinions and declarations of men who have had years of experience in the matters on which they presume to write.(Extracted from the Introduction)
A great dog story, a well told tale--the naturalist and adventurer John Muir recounts how he and his companion, a dog named Stickeen, each, alone, confronted and conquered their fears of an icy Alaskan glacier in 1880.
"You can't fool old Mother Nature. No, Sir, you can't fool old Mother Nature, and it's of no use to try." The animals of the Green Meadows and Green Forest have little adventures while Grandfather Frog tells stories to Mother West Wind's children, the Merry Little Breezes.