Category Great Books For Children

 

          Is there anyone who isn’t familiar with the famous character ‘Mowgli’? Hopefully none. The main character of the evergreen ‘The Jungle Book’ (1894), a collection of stories written by Rudyard Kipling, is a huge part of our childhood.

            Mowgli is a human child raised by wolves in the jungle. In these tales, the animals proved to be both Mowgli’s allies and adversaries. Baloo the bear, Bagheera the panther along with many others, are Mowgli’s friends. But Shere Khan the tiger is his biggest enemy. The stories are set in a forest in India.

            Kipling was born in India and spent the first five years of his childhood there. After about ten years in England, he went back to India, and worked there for about six and half years. The original publications contained illustrations, some by Rudyard’s father, John Lockwood Kipling. ‘The Jungle Book’ has remained popular, partly through its many adaptations for film and other media.

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            Well, the title character of this enthralling children’s book doesn’t even need an introduction, as he is one of the most popular cartoon characters in the world.

            ‘Winnie-the-Pooh’ is a classic 1926 children’s book by English author Alan A. Milne, which tells the stories of Winnie-the-Pooh, a silly bear living in the Hundred Acre Wood with his friends Piglet, Rabbit, Eeyore, Owl and Christopher Robin. It was illustrated by Ernest H. Sheppard. This story collection is a selection of 15 charming stories, created to show little ones what it means to be a true friend. Come along with Winnie-the-Pooh and friends as they learn about sharing and caring, about working together, and missing each other when they’re apart, about putting friends first and building friendships that last.

            The book consists of ten loosely-connected stories, each told in one of its ten chapters. Later ‘Winnie-the-Pooh’ was adapted into comic and animation format. In 2003, the book was listed at number 7 on the BBC’s survey ‘The Big Read’.

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            Do you dream of playing on the green and beautiful mountains sometimes? Then you will just enjoy the cute story of Heidi, the mountain girl from Switzerland.

            ‘Heidi’ is a two volume novel written by Johanna Spyri. It is by far the most popular piece of Swiss literature ever written, and has been translated from German into 50 languages, been filmed more than a dozen times, and more than 50 million copies of ‘Heidi’ books have been sold world-wide.

            This charming story is about an orphaned girl named Heidi who is sent away from her aunt to live with her grand-father in the Alps Mountains in Switzerland. Heidi’s grandfather is a cold hearted and mean man at the beginning.

            However, as they get to know each other, the love between Heidi and her grandfather, grows so strong, that they cannot be separated. Life in the mountains is perfect, and it all seems too good to be true, till Heidi is suddenly taken away from her beloved grandfather and her favourite mountains, and sent to Frankfurt.

            Heidi hates the hustle of city life. She can’t get over her homesickness and longs for the mountains where everything is green and fresh.

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            If you prefer a series of children’s books, rather than just a single storybook, you will find ‘The Wizard of Oz’ really fascinating. It is an amazing work for children written by American author L. Frank Baum.

            The first book in the series, ‘The Wonderful Wizard of Oz’ was published in 1900. Baum wrote thirteen sequels to the original novel, and a total of forty books, written by a variety of authors, belong in the series’ canon.

            ‘The Wonderful Wizard of Oz’ tells the story of an innocent little farm girl named Dorothy Gale, who is being raised by her Aunt Em and Uncle Henry when a tornado sweeps through their home and airlifts it, with Dorothy and her dog Toto inside. The next day, when the house finally hits solid ground, Dorothy steps out the front door. She sees a huge crowd of strange people and, on sight, decides this unfamiliar land isn’t for her. But she’s in Oz now. The story continues and revolves around Dorothy’s life and adventures afterwards.

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            Are you into stories about mischievous and imaginative children? Then you will surely love the works of the great storyteller Mark Twain.

            ‘The Adventures of Tom Sawyer’, written by Twain is a child’s adventure story. It is also, however, the story of a young boy’s transition into a young man. The book was published in 1876. Mark Twain describes some autobiographical events in the book. The novel is set around Twain’s actual boyhood home of Hannibal, near St. Louis, US, and many of the places in it are real. As a result, today, these places support a tourist industry.

            ‘The Adventures of Tom Sawyer’ has become a classic portrait of a mischievous youth, and the adventures of adolescence. It is one of the world’s best-loved tales ever.

            This amazing book was Twain’s first attempt at writing a real novel. The titular hero of the novel, Tom Sawyer, is a young boy living on the banks of the Mississippi River. He lives with his Aunt Polly, half-brother Sid, and his cousin Mary.

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          ‘The Happy Prince’ is a fantasy short story for children by the Irish author Oscar Wilde. It was first published in a collection called ‘The Happy Prince and Other Tales’ in 1888. It contains five stories: ‘The Happy Prince’, ‘The Nightingale and the Rose’, ‘The Selfish Giant’, ‘The Devoted Friend’, and ‘The Remarkable Rocket’.

          The story’s title character is a beautiful statue, covered in gold leaf and decorated with jewels. The statue represents a prince who, during his lifetime, was famous for being happy.

          However, the truth is that the prince appeared to be happy only because he knew nothing of life outside of his palace. Only after he died and became a statue did the prince learn of the suffering of the poor people in his city.

          The happy prince befriends a swallow that spends time on the statue, and asks it to offer some assistance to the people who are living in poverty.

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          ‘Rip Van Winkle’ is a short story written by Washington Irving, and it was published in 1819. The book is beautifully interwoven with fantasy and history. The story is based on a German folktale.

          It is the story of Rip Van Winkle, who lives in a village in the Catskills, with his wife and children. He is an easy-going man, with a nagging wife who constantly criticizes him.

          One day, Rip goes hunting in the mountains, and meets the ghost of Henry Hudson, the famed explorer. Rip eats and drinks with Hudson and his crew, then falls asleep under a tree.

          The story then moves twenty years ahead, when Rip wakes up to find that the world has changed. His wife has died. His children are grown. At first, the only person in his village who recognizes him is Peter Vanderdonk, the oldest man in the village.

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            ‘Kathasaritsagara’, meaning Ocean of the Streams of Stories, is an 11th century collection of Indian legends, fairy tales, and folk tales,  retold in Sanskrit by a scholar named Somadeva.

            Nothing is known about the author other than that his father’s name was Ramadevabatta.

            The work was compiled for the entertainment of the queen Suryamati, wife of king Anantadeva of Kashmir.

            Unlike most familiar classics, this work contains no hidden moral lessons. Instead, it is an easy celebration of earthly life. It consists of 18 books of 124 chapters, and has more than 21,000 verses, in addition to prose sections.

            The book contains a major tale, which is about the adventures of Naravahanadatta, son of the legendary king Udayana.

            Most of the other tales are interestingly connected to this central story.

            The work was translated into English by Charles Henry Tawney. The translation was published in two volumes in 1880 and 1884.

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            Written between 1605 and 1615, ‘Don Quixote’, also known as ‘The Ingenious Nobleman Sir Quixote of La Mancha’, is a children’s novel by Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra. It has been widely read, and enjoyed by children.

            The novel, originally written in Spanish, is about a wannabe knight, Alonso Quixano, who drags a farmer, Sancho Panza, along on a series of adventures. Don Quixote, in the first part of the book, does not see the world for what it is and prefers to imagine that he is living out a knightly story. The book was immediately translated into English, and it was a great and continuing success.

            ‘Don Quixote’ is considered to be one of the most important books of all time, and it is often cited as the first modern children’s novel.

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            ‘Robinson Crusoe’ is another sea adventure children’s book, written by Daniel Defoe. The novel ‘Robinson Crusoe’ tells the story of a young and impulsive Englishman who defies his parents’ wishes, and takes to the seas seeking adventure.

            He was involved in a series of violent storms at sea, and was warned by the captain that he should not be a seafaring man. The young Robinson Crusoe is ship-wrecked and cast away on a remote tropical island for 28 years.

            This wonderfully written book is said to be based on the true-life events of Alexander Selkirk, a sailor who survived four years on a Pacific island, after he encountered a terrible ship mishap.

            Despite its simple narrative style, ‘Robinson Crusoe’ was well received in the literary world. Before the end of 1719, the book had already run through four editions, and it has gone on to become one of the most widely published books in history.

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