During one of his several adventurous voyages in the 1600s, an Englishman becomes the sole survivor of a shipwreck and lives for nearly thirty years on a deserted island. Illustrated notes throughout the text explain the historical background of the story.

Horrified at the thought of caring for talkative, ten-year-old Rebecca, the spinster aunts nevertheless spend seven difficult years raising their niece, rewarding years for all three inhabitants of the little brick house in a small New England town.

"When Marilla Cuthbert and her brother, Matthew, decide to adopt a child from a distant orphanage, they don't get quite what they bargained for. The child who awaits them at the tiny Bright River train station is not the strapping young boy they'd imagined--someone to help Matthew work the fields of their small farm--but rather a freckle-faced, redheaded girl named Anne (with an e, if you please). Matthew and Marilla may not be sure about Anne, but...

For generations, children around the world have come of age with Louisa May Alcott's March girls: hardworking eldest sister Meg, headstrong, impulsive Jo, timid Beth, and precocious Amy. With their father away at war, and their loving mother Marmee working to support the family, the four sisters have to rely on one another for support as they endure the hardships of wartime and poverty. We witness the sisters growing up and figuring out what role...

Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is essential to the understanding of the American soul. The recent discovery of the first half of Twain's manuscript, long thought lost, made front-page news. And this unprecedented edition, which contains for the first time omitted episodes and other variations present in the first half of the handwritten manuscript, as well as facsimile reproductions of thirty manuscript pages, is indispensable to a full understanding...

Professor Henry Higgins thinks he can turn Eliza Doolittle, a poor flower seller, into a duchess by teaching her how to speak and look a certain way.

When the kind and imaginative seven-year-old Sara Crewe reaches Miss Minchin's Select Seminary for Young Ladies with her papa, she doesn't quite like it. "'I don't like it, papa," she said. "But then I dare say soldiers--even brave ones-- don't really like going into battle." The apple of her father's eye, Sara has all the privileges at the seminary and is treated with special care. Soon enough, she befriends her classmates and is nicknamed a 'princess',...

A simplified retelling of the adventures of Peter Pan, the boy who would not grow up. A fabulously redesigned edition of a Michael Hague backlist classic Peter Pan, the book based on J.M. Barrie's famous play, is filled with unforgettable characters: Peter Pan, the boy who would not grow up; the fairy, Tinker Bell; the evil pirate, Captain Hook; and the three children-Wendy, John, and Michael-who fly off with Peter Pan to Neverland, where they meet...

A simplified, abridged version of Captain Ahab's search for the white whale, accompanied by a short biography of Herman Melville and an essay focusing on the story's lessons of determination.

A Swiss orphan is heartbroken when she must leave her beloved grandfather and their happy home in the mountains to go to school and to care for an invalid girl in the city.