Classic Childrens Fiction

Fifty-five years ago, Helen L. Taylor took John Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress and simplified the vocabulary and concepts for young listeners while keeping the storyline intact. The result was a classic in itself, which has now sold over 600,000 copies. It's both a simple adventure story and a profound allegory of the Christian journey through life, a delightful listen with a message kids ages six to 12 can understand and remember. A new look for today's children enlivens the journey to the Celestial City.

December is the time of the annual Ceremony at which each twelve-year-old receives a life assignment determined by the Elders. Jonas watches his friend Fiona named Caretaker of the Old and his cheerful pal Asher labeled the Assistant Director of Recreation. But Jonas has been chosen for something special. When his selection leads him to an unnamed man, the man called only the Giver, he begins to sense the dark secrets that underlie the fragile perfection of his world.

Newbery Award-winner Gary Paulsen's best-known book comes to audio in this breathless, heart-gripping drama about a boy pitted against the wilderness with only a hatchet and a will to live. On his way to visit his recently divorced father in the Canadian mountains, thirteen-year-old Brian Robeson is the only survivor when the single-engine plane crashes. His body battered, his clothes in shreds, Brian must now stay alive in the boundless Canadian wilderness.

Rilla Blythe, youngest daughter of Anne, is almost 15 in 1914. As her brothers and friends prepare to go off to battle, the irrepressible Rilla realizes that she will be changed forever and the world will never be the same.

Cheveux blonds comme les blés, écharpe au vent... le petit prince est connu de tous. Les aventures de cet enfant pur et innocent tombé du ciel sont emplies d’amour, de poésie et de vérité. Voilà un message qui nous incite à poser un regard neuf sur notre humanité et notre condition humaine. C’est une invitation à revenir à l’essentiel, à célébrer la vie dans son expression la plus noble, en toute simplicité, avec les yeux du cœur.

Mafatu's name means Stout Heart, but the people of Hikueru call him a coward. He fears the sea and the powerful Sea God Moana because years ago, the powerful tides killed his mother. Such fear is shameful on this island, but it is especially humiliating for Mafatu, whose father reigns as Great Chief of Hikueru. One day, young Mafatu can no longer stand the jeers and taunts of the braver boys. With his faithful dog, Uri, he steals an outrigger canoe and paddles into the Polynesian sea to conquer his fear.

Meg Murry, her little brother Charles Wallace, and their mother are having a midnight snack on a dark and stormy night when an unearthly stranger appears at their door. He claims to have been blown off course and goes on to tell them that there is such a thing as a "tesseract", which, if you didn't know, is a wrinkle in time. Meg's father had been experimenting with time travel when he suddenly disappeared. Will Meg, Charles Wallace, and their friend Calvin outwit the forces of evil as they search through space for their father?

Freddy is certainly an extraordinary pig by all accounts. Although he spends his time oversleeping and overeating just like a normal pig, he also finds the time to daydream, enterprise, and even write poetry! Always full of new ideas, he proposes that the animals of Bean Farm start a tour company.

On a summer holiday in the countryside of England, five children suddenly find themselves without the supervision of their parents. Left alone with the housekeeper, the children anticipate a dull vacation. However, they soon find more adventure than they can handle. The first day after their parents leave, the children head for a gravel pit to pretend that they are at the beach. While digging in the sand they find a Psammead, or a sand fairy.

In this charming sequel to Anne of Green Gables, the unpredictable red-headed heroine returns for more wonderful adventures. When Anne Shirley first came to the beautiful Canadian town of Avonlea, she was a mischievous, talkative orphan who captured the hearts of everyone she met. Now, a few years later, Anne is a young woman with new dreams.

On a sunny afternoon, Alice discovers a bottle that says DRINK ME. Unable to resist, she follows the label’s instructions...and immediately shrinks to tumble down a rabbit hole into an adventure where nothing is as it seems. From The Mad Hatter to the White Rabbit, the grinning Cheshire Cat and the Queen of Hearts, Alice meets a cast of characters who are both eccentric and memorable.

Aladdin is a tailor's son who dreams of making his fortune and marrying the Sultan's daughter, but is tricked into becoming apprentice to a cunning magician. He needs Aladdin to do a very special job - climb down into a deep, dark cave and fetch an oil lamp.... A magical retelling of the classic tale, read by Stephen Mangan.

A fun collection of all-time favorite songs for everyone to enjoy...and join in with! The Wheels on the Bus includes: "The Wheels on the Bus", "Baa, Baa, Black Sheep", "If You're Happy and You Know It", "Do Your Ears Hang Low", "Skip to My Lou", "Hickory Dickory Dock", "Itsy Bitsy Spider/Jack and Jill", "I’m a Little Teapot", "Mary Had a Little Lamb", "Bingo", "Hush, Little Baby", "Where, Oh Where Has My Little Dog Gone", "Old MacDonald", "The Muffin Man", "A Tiskit A Tasket", "Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star", "Row, Row Your Boat", "Oh, Susanna", and more!

The idealized childhood of this fictional hero, based on Mark Twain's own early life along the banks of the Mississippi, is filled with robust good humor and high-spirited adventures. Yet there is also an in-depth experience of the central South of the 1840s—its dialects, superstitions, and social values. While romping through fun-filled fantasy, Tom Sawyer shows how morally complicated real life can be. In his unabridged reading of the American classic, actor Patrick Fraley crafts 36 authentic "voices" to represent the wide range of Twain's delightful characters.

When they are left in the woods by their parents, two children find their way home despite an encounter with a wicked witch.

On Prince Edward Island, aging siblings Mathew and Marilla Cuthbert decide to adopt a boy to help with chores around the farm. But when Mathew arrives at the train platform, the only living creature in sight, legs dangling from the piles of shingles where she sits, is a freckled, green-eyed, redheaded little girl. Mathew senses immediately that life at Green Gables is going to be very different. And how right he is.

Olivia Colman reads E. Nesbit's classic novel. 'The Railway Children' is a masterpiece of children's fiction. It wonderfully evokes a bygone age and is packed with fun, excitement and adventure. When their father goes away unexpectedly, Roberta (Bobbie), Peter and Phyllis have to move from London to a cottage in the countryside. At the local station they make friends with the porter, Perks, and spend their time waving to the passengers on the trains.

Willy Wonka's famous chocolate factory is opening at last! But only five lucky children will be allowed inside. And the winners are: Augustus Gloop, an enormously fat boy whose hobby is eating; Veruca Salt, a spoiled-rotten brat whose parents are wrapped around her little finger; Violet Beauregarde, a dim-witted gum-chewer with the fastest jaws around; Mike Teavee, a toy pistol-toting gangster-in-training who is obsessed with television; and Charlie Bucket, our hero, a boy who is honest and kind, brave and true, and good and ready for the wildest time of his life!

Anne Shirley, the mischievous, carrot-topped waif of Anne of Green Gables, has grown into a lovely young woman who leaves the security of Prince Edward Island to enroll at Redmond College. There, she discovers a professor who believes education is wasted on women, ponders the security offered in marriage proposals, and a host of other questions of young adulthood.

The BFG is no ordinary bone-crunching giant. He is far too nice and jumbly. It's lucky for Sophie that he is. Had she been carried off in the middle of the night by the Bloodbottler, or any of the other giants - rather than the BFG - she would have soon become breakfast. When Sophie hears that the giants are flush-bunking off to England to swollomp a few nice little chiddlers, she decides she must stop them once and for all. And the BFG is going to help her!