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The Railway Children. please visit www.valdebooks.com for a full list of titles ... Read more

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Originally published in 1886-1892.This volume from the Cornell University Library's print collections was scanned on an APT BookScan and converted to JPG 2000 format by Kirtas Technologies.All titles scanned cover to cover and pages may include marks notations and other marginalia present in the original volume. ... Read more

Product Description
Originally published in 1895.This volume from the Cornell University Library's print collections was scanned on an APT BookScan and converted to JPG 2000 format by Kirtas Technologies.All titles scanned cover to cover and pages may include marks notations and other marginalia present in the original volume. ... Read more

Product Description
Originally published in 1886-1892.This volume from the Cornell University Library's print collections was scanned on an APT BookScan and converted to JPG 2000 format by Kirtas Technologies.All titles scanned cover to cover and pages may include marks notations and other marginalia present in the original volume. ... Read more

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This book was converted from its physical edition to the digital format by a community of volunteers. You may find it for free on the web. Purchase of the Kindle edition includes wireless delivery. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

A charming story
This a story of a family who move to the country during the absence of the husband and father.The children are left to their own devices as Mother writes stories to support them.The children are fascinated by a nearby railway line and station and through these make interesting friends and have exciting adventures.A most satisfying read! ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Enchanted Castle reader
Our 10-year old daughter read the whole book the day it arrived.She enjoyed it and will recommend it to friends.Thanks! ... Read more

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A book ... Read more

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An inviting introduction to Shakespeare for children retells, in modern English, the stories in ten of the Bard's greatest plays, illustrated with dramatic black-and-white photographs from modern productions on the English stage. UP. "Amazon.com Review
Yes, the name is familiar. E. Nesbit, who died in 1924, gaveus The RailwayChildren and The EnchantedCastle. Now, with the publication of the Shakespeare storiesshe wrote (at their request) for her own children, adults and kidstogether can enjoy her fairy-tale prose in the retelling of 10 ofShakespeare's greatest stories.

If you aren't sure you remember which daughter Lear visited first, whowas traveling with Macbeth when he met those witches, or just whyRosalind was wandering around in the forest dressed like a boy--checkhere. Wonderful on their own, these retellings are also greatpreparation for any early theater or film excursion into thesetimeless plays.

[The publishers recommend this book for ages 11 to adult, and they're right.] ... Read more

Customer Reviews (3)

Re-Telling Shakespeare
I needed a book that would tell the stories of Shakespeare in current language.Yes, it would be good for children to hear the original language, but the program I have in mind is for much younger children and I needed a fast summary.This book provides me with those summaries in a fun way with pictures from stage plays.

this is not for grade school age children
I bought this to read to my 9 year old son.The language used in this book was very advanced.I found the difficulty level to be just a notch below the actual plays. I found a book called "Stories from Shakespeare" by Geraldine McCaughrean which was much better and my son is enjoying reading "Shakespeare".

Children will now understand Shakepeare!
Edith Nesbit is a wonderful writer, who keeps the integrity of the Shakespeare plays, and makes them understandable to young readers.

I read these stories to my boys, who love to hear all the tales of sword fights, king and queens, difficult lives, funny situations, and times of long ago.

For me, it has been a great overview of famous Shakespeare plays that seem to complicated to read through in their original form. This book gives you the core of the stories, so that later on , one could then read the original stories by the Bard of Avon. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Don't judge this book by its title! Excellent book!
I thought this title sounded really stupid. But I enjoyed the previous book in the series (The Story of the Treasure Seekers) so much that I decided to read this one. And I'm really glad I did. I enjoyed it MORE than the first one.

What's so great about this series is the characters. They are so real, so well-written. The situations they get into are highly amusing, but it's the way the characters are portrayed, esp. Oswald, that makes this one of my all-time favorite books. I am enjoying it for the first time as a grown-up, and my 16 year old son is enjoying it, too. It is LOL funny and I wish it were more well-known.

I read that the character Oswald was one of the all-time favorite characters of JK Rowling, when someone asked her about books and authors she really enjoyed. These books are not really like the Harry Potter books (there's no magic) but the characterization and the humor is very similar. I can see why Jo likes them and I heartily agree. ... Read more

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After being sent to the country "to learn to be good", the Bastable children and their two friends form the Society of the Wouldbegoods, but continue to become involved in adventures...
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The story concerns a family who move to a house near the railway after the father is imprisoned as a result of being falsely accused of selling state secrets to the Russians. The three children, Roberta, Peter and Phyllis, find amusement in watching the trains on the nearby railway line and waving to the passengers. They become friendly with Perks, the station porter, and with the Old Gentleman who regularly takes the 9:15 down train. He is eventually able to help prove their father's innocence, and the family is reunited.

The theme of an innocent man being falsely imprisoned for espionage and finally vindicated might have been influenced by the Dreyfus Affair, which was a prominent world-wide news item a few years before the book was written. Also the Russian exile, persecuted by the Tsars for writing "a beautiful book about poor people and how to help them" and subsequently helped by the children, was most likely an amalgam of the real-life dissidents Sergius Stepniak and Peter Kropotkin who were both friends of the author.
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They were not railway children to begin with. I don't suppose they had ever thought about railways except as a means of getting to Maskelyne and Cook's, the Pantomime, Zoological Gardens, and Madame Tussaud's. They were just ordinary suburban children, and they lived with their Father and Mother in an ordinary red-brick-fronted villa, with coloured glass in the front door, a tiled passage that was called a hall, a bath-room with hot and cold water, electric bells, French windows, and a good deal of white paint, and 'every modern convenience', as the house-agents say.

There were three of them. Roberta was the eldest. Of course, Mothers never have favourites, but if their Mother HAD had a favourite, it might have been Roberta. Next came Peter, who wished to be an Engineer when he grew up; and the youngest was Phyllis, who meant extremely well.

Mother did not spend all her time in paying dull calls to dull ladies, and sitting dully at home waiting for dull ladies to pay calls to her. She was almost always there, ready to play with the children, and read to them, and help them to do their home-lessons. Besides this she used to write stories for them while they were at school, and read them aloud after tea, and she always made up funny pieces of poetry for their birthdays and for other great occasions, such as the christening of the new kittens, or the refurnishing of the doll's house, or the time when they were getting over the mumps.

DownloadThe Railway Children Now! ... Read more

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The Story of the Treasure Seekers is a novel by E Nesbit. First published in 1899, it tells the story of Dora, Oswald, Dicky, Alice, Noel, and Horace Octavius (H. O.) Bastable, and their attempts to assist their widowed father and recover the fortunes of their family; its sequels are the The Wouldbegoods (1899) and The New Treasure Seekers (1904). The novel's complete name is The Story of the Treasure Seekers: Being the Adventures of the Bastable Children in Search of a Fortune. The original edition included illustrations by H. R. Millar. The Puffin edition (1958) was illustrated by Cecil Leslie.

British writer Michael Moorcock would later use the character, or his name, of Oswald Bastable for the hero and first-person narrator of Moorcock's trilogy A Nomad of the Time Streams which, published from 1971 until 1981, greatly influenced the nascent genre of steampunk.

The story is told from a child's point of view. The narrator is Oswald, but on the first page he announces:

"It is one of us that tells this story - but I shall not tell you which: only at the very end perhaps...
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Here is a collection of four delightful dragon stories by two master writers for children. "The Reluctant Dragon" is the best known, but the others are equally appealing. In "The Reluctant Dragon", a boy discovers a dragon in a nearby cave. The villagers want to send for St George to slay him, but he is a friendly dragon and doesn't want to fight! In "The Island of Nine Whirlpools", a princess is imprisoned and a suitor has to get past the dragon in order to marry her. In "The Fiery Dragon", Princess Sabrinetta is kept in a dragon-proof tower, but a fiery dragon is roaming the neighbourhood. Finally, in "The Last Dragon", the King of Cornwall's daughter doesn't want to be tied to a rock awaiting a prince to rescue her from the clutches of a dragon. In any case, there is only one dragon left alive. This title is presented with lively music and even the occasional amusing sound effect. ... Read more