Juvenile Fiction Books

CHAPTER I. FATE AND A RUSTY NAIL. On such an afternoon, when all the rest of the world lay in the fierce glare of the scorching sun, who could blame the children for choosing to perch themselves on the old garden wall, where it was so cool, and shady, and enticing? And who, as Kitty often asked tragically in the days and weeks that followed, could have known that by doing so "they were altering... more...

Christmas There is nothing in England that exercises a more delightful spell over my imagination than the lingerings of the holiday customs and rural games of former times. They recall the pictures my fancy used to draw in the May morning of life, when as yet I only knew the world through books, and believed it to be all that poets had painted it; and they bring with them the flavour of those honest... more...

ROSE MARY OF SWEETBRIAR "Why, don't you know nothing in the world compliments a loaf of bread like the asking for a fourth slice," laughed Rose Mary as she reached up on the stone shelf above her head and took down a large crusty loaf and a long knife. "Thick or thin?" she asked as she raised her lashes from her blue eyes for a second of hospitable inquiry. "Thin," answered... more...

THE GRANDMOTHER OF THE DOLLS. Once upon a time there lived on a plantation, in the very middle of Middle Georgia, a little girl and a little boy and their negro nurse. The little girl’s name was Sweetest Susan. That was the name her mother gave her when she was a baby, and she was so good-tempered that everybody continued to call her Sweetest Susan when she grew older. She was seven years old. The... more...

AUTHOR'S INTRODUCTION "The Boat Club" was written and published more than forty years ago, and was the first juvenile book the author had ever presented to the public. Young people who read it at the age of eighteen have now reached threescore, and those who read it at ten have passed their half-century of life. The electrotype plates from which it has been printed for more than a... more...

A BOY SCOUT CAMP On a sunny September afternoon two shelter tents stood in a mountain valley, on the south bank of a creek which, miles and miles below, becomes the Sweetwater river. Above the flap of each tent lifted a yellow pennant, in the center of which a blue beaver stood in an alert and listening attitude, his flat tail outstretched. A campfire blazed in front of the two tents, and some distance... more...

HOW IT BEGAN Jimmy was nearly eight years of age when these strange things happened to him. His full name was James Orchardson Sinclair Wilmot, and he had been at Miss Lawson's small school at Ramsgate since he was six. There were only five boys besides himself, and Miss Roberts was the only governess besides Miss Lawson. The half-term had just passed, and they did not expect to go home for the... more...

It was Christmas-eve over on the East Side. Darkness was closing in on a cold, hard day. The light that struggled through the frozen windows of the delicatessen store, and the saloon on the corner, fell upon men with empty dinner-pails who were hurrying homeward, their coats buttoned tightly, and heads bent against the steady blast from the river, as if they were butting their way down the street. The... more...

SOMETHING ABOUT THE ROVER BOYS "Sam, this isn't the path." "I know it, Tom." "We've missed our way," went on Tom Rover, with a serious look on his usually sunny face. "It looks that way to me," answered Sam Rover, his younger brother. "I think we made a wrong turn after we slid down the cliff." "What is keeping Dick?" "I don't... more...

CHAPTER I THE BIG DOG "Come on, Bunny, let's just have one more teeter-tauter!" cried Sue, dancing around on the grass of the yard. "Just one more!" and she raced over toward a board, put across a sawhorse, swaying up and down as though inviting children to have a seesaw. "We can't teeter-tauter any more, Sue," objected Bunny Brown. "We have to go to the store for... more...