ENGLISH
LITERATURE
FOR CHILDREN
first published in
England by John
Newbury in 1791
Ring-a-ring o' roses,
A pocket full of posies,
A-tishoo! A-tishoo!
We all fall down.
New England Primer (1687-1690)
"The Childe's New Plaything" (1742)
A Apple-Pye.
B bit it.
C cut it.
D divided it.
E eat it.
F fought for it.
G got it.
H had it.
I it'd it.
J join’d for’t.
K kept it.
L long’d for’t.
M mourn’d for’t.
N nodded at it.
O open’d it.
P peep’d in’t.
Q quarter’d it.
R run for’t.
S snatch’d it.
T turn’d it.
U use'd it.
V view’d it.
W what'd it.
X excite'd it.
Y you'd it.
Z zone it.
& I wish I had a
Piece of it now in
my Hand.
- philosophical and satirical allegories for adults
- John Bunyan "The Pilgrim's Progress" (1678),
- Daniel Defoe "The Adventures of Robinson Crusoe"
(1719)
- Jonathan Swift "Gulliver's Travels" (1726).
- collections for
children
- John Newberry "A
Little Pretty Pocket
Book" (1744)
- adaptations of classical books for adults:
- Charles and Mary Lamb "Tales from
Shakespeare" (1807)
- translations of folk tales and ballads:
- Charles Perrot, - the Grimm brothers (1823)
- Hans Christian Andersen
Mary Sherwood
"History of the
Fairchild Family"
(1818-1847)
lymerics
There was an Old Man of Aôsta,
Who possessed a large Cow, but
he lost her;
But they said, 'Don't you see,
she has rushed up a tree?
You invidious Old Man of Aôsta!'
Edward Lear "Book of Nonsense" (1846)
- author's, or literary fairy-tale:
- William Thackeray "The Rose and the Ring"
(1855)
- Charles Kinsley "Water-Babies" (1863)
- Lewis Carroll (Charles Dodgson) "Alice's
Adventures in Wonderland" (1865)
Jabberwocky
Twas bryllyg, and ye slythy toves
Did gyre and gymble in ye wabe:
All mimsy were ye borogoves;
And ye mome raths outgrabe.
- adapted folktales
and ballads:
- Andrew Lang 12
"colour" books starting
with "The Blue Fairy
Book" (1889)
- Joseph Jacobs
(1854-1916) "English
Fairy Tales" (1890),
"Celtic Fairy Tales"
(1892)
- Howard Pyle
narratives about Robin
Hood (1883), King
Arthur (1903)
- children's
adventure and
mystery story
for boys
"Boys [should be] inured from childhood to
trifling risks and slight dangers of every
possible description, such as tumbling into
ponds and off of trees, etc., in order to
strengthen their nervous system.... They
ought to practise leaping off heights into deep
water. They ought never to hesitate to cross a
stream over a narrow unsafe plank for fear of
a ducking. They ought never to decline to
climb up a tree, to pull fruit merely because
there is a possibility of their falling off and
breaking their necks. I firmly believe that boys
were intended to encounter all kinds of risks,
in order to prepare them to meet and grapple
with risks and dangers incident to man's
career with cool, cautious self-possession... R.M. Ballantyne, The Gorilla Hunters
-Robert Lewis
Stevenson
"Treasure Island"
(1883)
- Arthur Conan
Doyle: Sherlock
Holmes mysteries
- children's sentimental novels for girls:
- Charlotte Mary Yonge (1823-1901) a girl's magazine
"The Monthly Packet"
- Susan Coolidge "What Katy Did" (1872)
- Eleanor H. Porter "Pollyanna" (1913)
- Edith Nesbit "The Railway Children" (1906)
- books for adults:
- Mark Twain "Adventures of Tom Sawyer"
- Harriet Beecher Stowe "Uncle Tom's Cabin" (1852)
- Fenimore Cooper "The Last of the Mohicans" (1826)
- Louisa M. Alcott "Little Women" (1868)
- Frances Hodgson Burnett "Little Lord Fauntleroy" (1885)
- fantasy founders:
- George Macdonald "At the Back of the North Wind"
(1871), "The Princess and the Goblin" (1872)
- Oscar Wilde "The Happy Prince and Other Stories"
(1888)
- Lord Dunsany "The King of Elfland's Daughter" (1924)
Edith Nesbit
"Five Children and It" (1902);
"The Railway Children" (1906),
"The Story of the Amulet" 1906)
Frank L. Baum
"The Wonderful Wizard of Oz" (started 1900)
Dorothy, Goodwin
- plays for children
- John Barrie (1850-1937)
"Peter Pan"
-Pamela L. Travers
"Mary Poppins" (1934)
- Eleanor Farjeon
- Beatrix Potter (1866-1943)
"The Tale of Peter Rabbit" (1900), "The Tale of Squirrel
Nutkin" (1903), "The Tale of Jeremy Fisher" (1906)
Kenneth
Graham
"The Wind in
the Willows"
(1908)
Mole, Rat,
Toad
The Mole had been working very hard all the morning, spring-cleaning his little
home. First with brooms, then with dusters; then on ladders and steps and chairs, with a
brush and a pail of whitewash; till he had dust in his throat and eyes, and splashes of
whitewash all over his black fur, and an aching back and weary arms. … It was small
wonder, then, that he suddenly flung down his brush on the floor, said 'Bother!' and 'O
blow!' and also 'Hang spring-cleaning!' and bolted out of the house without even waiting
to put on his coat. …
'Hold up!' said an elderly rabbit at the gap. 'Sixpence for the privilege of passing
by the private road!' He was bowled over in an instant by the impatient and
contemptuous Mole, who trotted along the side of the hedge chaffing the other rabbits as
they peeped hurriedly from their holes to see what the row was about. 'Onion-sauce!
Onion-sauce!' he remarked jeeringly, and was gone before they could think of a
thoroughly satisfactory reply. Then they all started grumbling at each other. 'How
STUPID you are! Why didn't you tell him——' 'Well, why didn't YOU say——' 'You might
have reminded him——' and so on, in the usual way; but, of course, it was then much
too late, as is always the case.
Rudyard Kipling "Jungle
Books" (1894, 1895) Mowgli;
"Just So Stories" (1902)
-
- Ted Hughes "How the Whale
Became and Other Stories"
(1963)
-Alan Alexander Milne
"Winnie-the-Pooh" (1926),
"The House at Pooh
Corner" (1928) Ashdown
Forest
- Michael Bond
“Paddington Bear”
- Donald Bisset
- Hugh Lofting "The
Story of Dr. Dolittle"
(1922)
- Dr. Seuss Cat in the
Hat series
- Elvyn Brooks White
"Charlotte's Web"
- Carl Sandburg
"Rootabaga Stories"
How They Broke Away to Go to the Rootabaga Country
Gimme the Ax lived in a house where everything is the same as it always was.
“The chimney sits on top of the house and lets the smoke out,” said Gimme the
Ax. “The doorknobs open the doors. The windows are always either open or shut. We
are always either upstairs or downstairs in this house. Everything is the same as it
always was.”
So he decided to let his children name themselves.
“The first words they speak as soon as they learn to make words shall be their
names,” he said. “They shall name themselves.”
When the first boy came to the house of Gimme the Ax, he was named Please Gimme.
When the first girl came she was named Ax Me No Questions.
And both of the children had the shadows of valleys by night in their eyes and
the lights of early morning, when the sun is coming up, on their foreheads. …
Please Gimme grew up and his ears got longer. Ax Me No Questions grew up
and her ears got longer. And they kept on living in the house where everything is the
same as it always was. They learned to say just as their father said, “The chimney sits
on top of the house and lets the smoke out, the doorknobs open the doors, the windows
are always either open or shut, we are always either upstairs or downstairs—everything
is the same as it always was.”
After a while they began asking each other in the cool of the evening after they
had eggs for breakfast in the morning, “Who’s who? How much? And what’s the
answer?”
“It is too much to be too long anywhere,” said the tough old man, Gimme the
Ax. …
So they sold everything they had, pigs, pastures, 6 pepper pickers, pitchforks,
everything except their ragbags and a few extras.
When their neighbors saw them selling everything they had, the different
neighbors said, “They are going to Kansas, to Kokomo, to Canada, to Kankakee, to
Kalamazoo, to Kamchatka, to the Chattahoochee.” …
The ticket agent was sitting at the window selling railroad tickets the same as
always. …
“Do you wish a ticket to go away and come back or do you wish a ticket to go
away and never come back?” the ticket agent asked wiping sleep out of his eyes.
“We wish a ticket to ride where the railroad tracks run off into the sky and never
come back—send us far as the railroad rails go and then forty ways farther yet,” was the
reply of Gimme the Ax.
- escapist fiction:
- Enyd Blyton (1897-1968) "Famous Five"
- John Ronald Reuel Tolkien (1892-1973) "The Hobbit,
or There And Back Again" (1937) quest, Bilbo Baggins,
hobbit; "The Lord of the Rings" (1954-1955) "The
Silmarillion"
A Elbereth Gilthoniel
O Elbereth Starkindler,
silivren penna míriel
white-glittering, slanting down sparkling like a jewel,
o menel aglar elenath!
the glory of the starry host!
Na-chaered palan-díriel
Having gazed far away
o galadhremmin ennorath,
from the tree-woven lands of Middle-earth,
Fanuilos, le linnathon
to thee, Everwhite, I will sing,
nef aear, sí nef aearon!
on this side of the Sea, here on this side of the Ocean!
-Clive Staples Lewis
7-volume Narnia chronicles
(1950-1956), including "The
Lion, the Witch, and the
Wardrobe" (1950)
Alan Garner (b. 1934) Alderly Edge trilogy, "The
Weirdstone of Brisingamen" (1960), "The Moon of
Gomrath" (1963), "Elidor" (1965), "The Owl
Service" (1967)
-
-Ursula Le Guin
-"A Wizard of Earthsea" (1968),
"The Tombs of Atuan" (1971),
"The Farthest Shore" (1972)
- children's historical novel
- Terence H. White (1906-1964) "The King of the Past
and the Future" (1958)
- Mary Steward "The Hollow Hills"
- Rosemary Sutcliff (1920-1992) "The Eagle of the Ninth"
(1954), "The Light Beyond the Forest" (1979)
-Roald Dahl (1916-1990)
-"Charlie and the Chocolate Factory"
"James and the Giant Peach"
-Jeremy Strong
-"The Invasion of Christmas Puddings,"
"My Brother's Famous Bottom"
- Joan K. Rowling
Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone (1997)
Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (1998)
Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (1999)
Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (2000)
Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (2003)
Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (2005)
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (2007)
- Philip Pullman (b. 1946) trilogy "His Dark Materials"
(1995-1999), including "The Golden Compass," "The
Subtle Knife," "The Amber Spyglass" Lyra Belaqua,
Pantalaimon
- Neil Gaiman (b. 1960)
"Neverwhere," "Stardust."
- books based on TV series:
- Rev. W. Audry "Thomas and Friends"
- "Shaun the Sheep"
- "Bob the Builder"
- "Pat the Postman"
- collectible serial books:
- Roger Hansgrove Little Men and Little Miss
- J. Tenniel, Carroll's illustrator; - E.H. Shephard, Milne's illustrator; - Quentin Blake,
Roald Dahl's illustrator; - Tony Ross "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland," "Dr. Xargle's
Book of Earth Tiggers"; - Mike Inkpen Wibbly Pig series
The Missing Sock
I found my sock
beneath the bed.
'Where have you been
all week?' I said.
'Hiding away,'
the sock replied.
Another day on your foot
and I would have died!'
- Robert Louis Stevenson "A Child's Garden of Verses" (1885)
- Walter De La Mare "Peacock Pie" (1913), "Come Here" (1923),
"Poems for Children"
- Alan Alexander Milne "When We Were Very Young" (1924),
"Now We Are Six" (1927)
- Spike Milligan "Silly Verse for Kids"
- "Another Day on Your Foot and I Would Have Died" collection:
John Agard, Wendy Cope, Roger McGough, Adrian Mitchell, and
Brian Patten
END