Juvenile Fiction Books

CHAPTER I. Little Dot had lost her way in the bush. She knew it, and was very frightened. She was too frightened in fact to cry, but stood in the middle of a little dry, bare space, looking around her at the scraggy growths of prickly shrubs that had torn her little dress to rags, scratched her bare legs and feet till they bled, and pricked her hands and arms as she had pushed madly through the bushes,... more...

CHAPTER I TROUBLE FROM NEAR AND FAR At the corner of High Street, where the lane led back to the stables of the Lake View Inn, Janice Day stopped suddenly, startled by an eruption of sound from around an elbow of the lane—a volley of voices, cat-calls, and ear-splitting whistles which shattered Polktown's usual afternoon somnolence. One youthful imitator expelled a laugh like the bleating of a... more...

CHAPTER I A QUEER HUNT "Let me count noses now, to see if you're all here," said Mother Bunker with a laugh, as her flock of children gathered around her. "Don't you want some help?" asked Grandma Bell. "Can you count so many boys and girls all alone, Amy?" "Oh, I think so," answered Mother Bunker. "You see I am used to it. I count them every time we come... more...

JET "What's your name?" "Jethro Lewis." "How old are you?" "I don't know." "Judging from the size I shouldn't say you were over ten." "My size 's against me, that's a fact; but I can run a good deal faster than some fellers twice as big." The manager of the District Messenger Station did not attempt to conceal a smile as the boy... more...

PROLOGUE A STORY BEFORE THE STORY On a green hillside a girl lay prone in the sweet grass, very still that she might not, by the slightest quiver, disturb the beauty that was about her. There was so very, very much beauty—the sky, azure blue overhead and paling where it touched the green-fringed earth; the whispering tree under which she lay, the lush meadow grass, moving like waves of a sea, the... more...

CHAPTER I. TROUBLE NO. 1 Whether you happen to be four or five, or six, or seven, or even older than that, no doubt you know by this time that a great many things need to be learned in this world, everything, in fact, and never more things than at seven. At least, so thought little Tattine, and what troubled her the most was that some of the things seemed quite wrong, and yet no one was able to right... more...

THE TAILOR OF GLOUCESTER In the time of swords and periwigs and full-skirted coats with flowered lappets—when gentlemen wore ruffles, and gold-laced waistcoats of paduasoy and taffeta—there lived a tailor in Gloucester. He sat in the window of a little shop in Westgate Street, cross-legged on a table, from morning till dark. All day long while the light lasted he sewed and snippeted, piecing out... more...

SILAS TRIPP. Probably the best known citizen of Wyncombe, a small town nestling among the Pennsylvania mountains, was Silas Tripp. He kept the village store, occasionally entertained travelers, having three spare rooms, was town treasurer, and conspicuous in other local offices. The store was in the center of the village, nearly opposite the principal church—there were two—and here it was that the... more...

CHAPTER I There was no possibility of taking a walk that day.  We had been wandering, indeed, in the leafless shrubbery an hour in the morning; but since dinner (Mrs. Reed, when there was no company, dined early) the cold winter wind had brought with it clouds so sombre, and a rain so penetrating, that further out-door exercise was now out of the question. I was glad of it: I never liked long walks,... more...

In writing this book my desire has been to draw an exact copy of the picture which is indelibly stamped on my own memory. I have carefully avoided exaggeration in everything of importance. All the chief and most of the minor incidents are facts. In regard to unimportant matters, I have taken the liberty of a novelist—not to colour too highly, or to invent improbabilities, but—to transpose time,... more...