description: "All children, except one, grow up."  That's the famous first line of J. M. Barrie's novel Peter and Wendy, better known as Peter Pan. For a number of years Penguin Classics has been publishing so-called children's literature, giving each edition the full Penguin Classics treatment: engagingly written critical introductions, suggestions for further readings, and helpful explanatory notes. We do this not only because these books help define classic literature, but because they're great stories that live in the popular imagination, and like all great literature, they are a joy to reread, long after we've finished school, long after we've become grownups.  And so we happily urge you to rediscover--or to read for the first time--Alcott's Little Women (edited by the feminist critic and cultural commentator Elaine Showalter), Burnett's A Little Princess (rife with allusions to Thackeray and Dickens, notes editor U.C. Knoepflmacher) or The Secret Garden (which, as editor Alison Lurie observes, exhibits Brontëan influences), Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (a foundation text of anarchic children's literature, paired with Through the Looking-Glass by editor Hugh Haughton), Selected Tales of the Brothers Grimm (translated by the eminent David Luke), The Complete Fairy Tales of George MacDonald (a favorite of J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis, says editor Knoepflmacher), or Stevenson's rousing adventure stories including Treasure Island (edited by Penguin Classics consulting editor John Seelye--and without which, arguably, there would be no Pirates of the Caribbean).  You'll find many more such titles in the Children's Classics Library that will bring reading pleasure to your whole family. Included are 51 great titles:  The Complete Fables by Aesop Little Women by Louisa May Alcott Ragged Dick and Struggling Upward by Horatio Alger Peter Pan by J.M. Barrie The Wonderful World of Oz by L. Frank Baum A Little Princess by Frances Hodgson Burnett The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett Tarzan of the Apes by Edgar Rice Burroughs Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass by Lewis Carroll Pinocchio by Carlo Collodi The Red Badge of Courage and Other Stories by Stephen Crane Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe A Christmas Carol and Other Christmas Writings by Charles Dickens A Study in Scarlet by Arthur Conan Doyle The Lost World and Other Thrilling Tales by Arthur Conan Doyle The Hound of the Baskervilles by Arthur Conan Doyle The Adventures and Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes by Arthur Conan Doyle The Sign of Four by Arthur Conan Doyle The Valley of Fear and Selected Stories by Arthur Conan Doyle The Three Musketeers by Alexandre Dumas The Man in the Iron Mask by Alexandre Dumas The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas In the Land of Time by Lord Dunsany The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame Riders of the Purple Sage by Zane Grey Selected Tales (Brothers Grimm) by Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm Nights with Uncle Remus by Joel Chandler Harris Uncle Remus by Joel Chandler Harris Legend of Sleepy Hollow and Other Stories by Washington Irving Just-So Stories by Rudyard Kipling The Jungle Books by Rudyard Kipling Captains Courageous by Rudyard Kipling The Call of the Wild; White Fang; and Other Stories by Jack London The Complete Fairy Tales by George MacDonald Five Children and It by E. Nesbit Frankenstein by Mary Shelley The Pearl by John Steinbeck The Red Pony by John Steinbeck Kidnapped by Robert Louis Stevenson The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson Dracula by Bram Stoker Gulliver's Travels by Jonathan Swift Pudd'nhead Wilson by Mark Twain The Prince and the Pauper by Mark Twain The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court by Mark Twain The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain Around the World in Eighty Days by Jules Verne Daddy-Long-Legs and Dear Enemy by Jean Webster Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm by Kate Douglas Wiggin
language: English
title: The Children's Library
titlecomplete: The Children's Library
publisher: Penguin Classics