Children's

Mark Twain published The Adventures of Tom Sawyer in 1876, and within a generation it had become one of the most widely read books in the American literary canon. It is the story of a boy named Tom Sawyer growing up in the fictional town of St. Petersburg, Missouri, sometime in the antebellum South. Tom…

Published in 1983 and illustrated by Quentin Blake, Roald Dahl’s The Witches is one of the most beloved and genuinely frightening books in children’s literature. The story begins with the narrator, a young English boy living in Norway, learning from his grandmother that real witches exist. These are not the pointy-hat, broomstick variety of fairy…

Louisa May Alcott wrote Little Women quickly, reluctantly, and under pressure from her publisher. She didn’t think much of the idea at first: a novel for girls, following the domestic lives of sisters in New England. She submitted the first part in 1868, the book sold immediately and enthusiastically, and she produced the second part…

Roald Dahl published Fantastic Mr. Fox in 1970, and in the fifty-plus years since, it has become one of those children’s books that parents rediscover with as much pleasure as their kids. It is lean and fast, clocking in at fewer than a hundred pages, and it delivers exactly what it promises on the cover:…