Dear children: Do you like Elephants? Do you believe in Giants? And do you love all the jolly people of the Wonderful Land of Oz? Well then you'll want to hear about the latest happenings in that delightful Kingdom. All are set forth in true Oz fashion in "Kabumpo in Oz," the sixteenth Oz book. Kabumpo is an Elegant Elephant. He is very old and wise, and has a kindly heart, as have all the Oz folks. In the new book you'll meet Prince Pompa, and Peg Amy, a charming Wooden Doll. There are new countries, strange adventures and the most surprising Box of Magic you have ever heard of...

On many a day had Handy, the Goat Girl of Mern, pursued her goats up and down the rocky eminences of her native mountain. And never—NEVER—in her fourteen or so years' experience had she been blown up by a mountain spring. But there comes, in every one's experience a day which is unlike every other day, and so it was with the Goat Girl. As she was pursuing What-a-butter, her favorite goat, there was a sudden crash, a whish, and up flew the slab of rock on which she was standing, up and away. The adventures into which she was carried by this simple though awefull beginning take a whole book to relate...

A voyage on the famous Nonestic Ocean! What could be more thrilling than that? We—many of us—have taken trips on the prosaic Atlantic or even Pacific, but have we found a SEA FOREST with flying fish and swimming birds? Have we been pursued by a real SEA SERPENT, or had our ship transfixed by the immense ivory tusk of a NARWHAL? Have we come upon the glittering island of PEAKENSPIRE, or made friends with a charming talking hippopotamus? Yet all these things and more befall Captain Salt, one time Pirate and now Royal Explorer of Oz, and his merry crew...

Young King Randy of Regalia is visited by his old friend, Kabumpo, the Elegant Elephant of Pumperdink. Together, they set out to visit their friend Jinnicky the Red Jinn in the Land of Ev. On the way, they meet Planetty, the silver Princess from Anuther Planet, and her fire-breathing thunder colt. When they reach Jinnicky's palace, they find that Jinnicky has been deposed and enchanted by an untrustworthy slave! Can Randy and Kabumpo defeat Gludwig and restore peace and justice to Ev? The Silver Princess in Oz is the thirty-second of the Oz books created by L. Frank Baum and his successors, and the eighteenth written by Ruth Plumly Thompson. - Summary by Beth Thomas and Wikipedia

An elephant in Oz? You bet! The tiny kingdom of Pumperdink has what no neighboring kingdom has: an Elegant Elephant in court, and his name is Kabumpo. He is very proud of his kingdom, his elegance and tends to be just the smallest bit pompous. On the other hand, he loves the young prince Pompo and goes with him in a desperate search to save their kingdom from disappearing. Yes, the prince must find the 'proper princess' and marry her within 7 days or the entire kingdom and everyone in it will be gone...

The Cowardly Lion, always fearful, has become even more afraid than usual and is convinced that he has lost the courage the Wizard of OZ gave him man years ago. To remedy this he decides to follow the dubious advice from the Scrapwork Girl, to 'find someone who has courage and swallow him up'. Unfortunately the King of the little known country of Mudge wants him captured and added to his lion collection. Naturally new characters, all funny and fun, join in the collision of intents and purposes as only in t he magical land of OZ can they do so...

Another great book in the world of Oz, in which King Fumbo of Ragbad loses his head in a storm and Prince Tatters, accompanied by the wise and wonderful old soldier Grampa, sets off to find the king's head, a fortune, and a princess. With Bill, a live iron weathercock, they visit a Wizard's Garden and discover Urtha, a lovely girl made all of flowers -- and proceed to fall, swim, explode, sail, and fly above and below Oz and Ev. Grampa and Co. eventually meet Dorothy herself, traveling with a Forgetful...

"Princess Ozma has ruled so wisely and happily in the wonderful Land of Oz for so long that most of us have forgotten the strange story of the Lost King of Oz—Ozma's father. As everyone in Oz knows, the King was transformed from his royal self by Mombi, the wicked old Gilliken witch, and lost his throne and his crown when he, himself, was lost. In this new Oz book the Royal Historian tells how Snip, the little buttonboy, and Pajuka, the great white goose—who had been the lost King's prime minister in the good old days—set out from the jolly Kingdom of Kimbaloo to find the King and to petition Princess Ozma to punish Mombi for her wicked mischief...

A survey of the myths and legends concerning lycanthropy from ancient times to the Victorian Era.

This is a collection of fairy tales, retold by Sabine Baring-Gould. The collection contains such well-known stories as Cinderella and the Beauty and the Beast, but also tales which are now not as widely known, such as the Yellow Dwarf and the White Cat. - Summary by Carolin

Samuel Adams was born in 1833, began journalism in 1858, served in the Army for 10 years & returned home to continue with his journalism. Journalism must have been his passion as he did write many books with this one being one of his last. ‘The Myths and Fables of To-day’ is a wonderful collection of myths & fables that are certain to keep the kids smiling. Summary by adr6090.

In 1837 came Phantasmion, a Fairy Tale, Sara Coleridge's longest original work, described by critic Mike Ashley as "the first fairytale novel written in English". Historian of literature Dennis Butts describes Phantasmion as a "remarkable pioneering fantasy" and "an extraordinary monument to her talent". The songs in Phantasmion were much admired at the time by Leigh Hunt and other critics. Some of them, such as "Sylvan Stag" and "One Face Alone", are extremely graceful and musical, and the whole fairy tale is noticeable for the beauty of the story and the richness of its language...

Selma Lagerlöf was born in Vaermland, Sweden, in 1858 and enjoyed a long and very successful career as a writer, receiving the Nobel-Price in Literature in 1909. She died in Vaermland in 1940. The Wonderful Adventures of Nils (Orig. Nils Holgerssons underbara resa genom Sverige) is a famous work of fiction by Selma Lagerlöf, published in two parts in 1906 and 1907. The background for publication was a commission from the National Teachers Association in 1902 to write a geography reader for the public schools...

These are beautiful little stories about Christmas from the Swedish storyteller Selma Lagerlöf. As she explains in the first story, they were told her by her grandmother "I remember that grandmother told story after story from morning till night, and that we children sat beside her, quite still, and listened. It was a glorious life! No other children had such happy times as we did. It isn’t much that I recollect about my grandmother. I remember that she had very beautiful snow-white hair, and stooped when she walked, and that she always sat and knitted a stocking...

Sisters Margaret and Frances wait for their younger brother Edward to go for a nap before embarking on the adventure of trying to stand on the heads of their shadows. Daddy sees them and encourages them to chase further adventures of childhood, little suspecting where they will take them. - Summary by Lynne Thompson

What began as a translation project became a retelling of four classic fairy tales from the Cabinet des Fees, the French collection of over forty volumes. "Certainly the translations, when finished, did not satisfy me, and so I turned back to the beginning and have rewritten the stories in my own way, which (as you may say with the Irish butler) “may not be the best claret, but ’tis the best ye’ve got.” —Preface

The term ‘Hitopadesha’ is a combination of two Sanskrit terms, ‘Hita’ (welfare/ benefit) and ‘Upadesha’ (counsel). As the term suggests, The Hitopadesha is a collection of tales that gives good counsel. Hitopadesa was presumably written by Narayan Pandit and is an independent treatment of the Vishnu Sarman's Panchatantra (3rd century BC) which it resembles in form. In Hitopadesha, Vishnu Sarman is depicted as a Sage who undertakes to give good counsel to the sons of Sudarsana, the king of Pataliputra, through stories within stories involving talking animals...

The most careless reader can hardly fail to see that many of the Tales in this volume have the same groundwork as those with which he has been familiar from his earliest youth. They are Nursery Tales, in fact, of the days when there were tales in nurseries–old wives’ fables, which have faded away before the light of gas and the power of steam. (Excerpt from Popular Tales from the Norse.)

This is a collection of Norse folktales selected as being appropriate for children. They range from short pieces such as, "How One Went Out to Woo" to the longer stories such as, "The Blue Belt" and "Shortshanks," and include such favorites as, "The Three Billy-Goats Gruff" and "The Lad Who Went to the North Wind." - Summary by Larry Wilson

Le Morte d’Arthur (spelled Le Morte Darthur in the first printing and also in some modern editions, Middle French for la mort d’Arthur, “the death of Arthur”) is Sir Thomas Malory’s compilation of some French and English Arthurian romances. The book contains some of Malory’s own original material (the Gareth story) and retells the older stories in light of Malory’s own views and interpretations. First published in 1485 by William Caxton, Le Morte d’Arthur is perhaps the best-known work of English-language Arthurian literature today. Many modern Arthurian writers have used Malory as their source, including T. H. White for his popular The Once and Future King.

The scene of the following Poem is laid chiefly in the vicinity of Loch Katrine, in the Western Highlands of Perthshire. The time of Action includes Six Days, and the transactions of each Day occupy a Canto.

A collection of fairy tales regarding myths and legends of the Isle of Man. Sophia was considered one of the key figures of the Manx cultural revival. - Summary by afutterer

This is the final installment in Sophocles's Theban Plays, following Oedipus Rex and Oedipus at Colonus. Oedipus's daughter Antigone deliberately breaks the laws of Thebes when she buries her brother's body and is sentenced to death. She clashes with Creon, the King of Thebes, over what constitutes justice and morality: the laws of the state or the laws of the individual.

Bedtime is the time for strange and wonderful stories as we drift into slumber. This children's book is full of them and the adventures of all who climb that Ladder of Rickety Rungs each night.

“Among other qualities which have been supposed to belong to a dead man’s hand, are its medicinal virtues, in connection with which may be mentioned the famous ‘dead hand,’ which was, in years past, kept at Bryn Hall, Lancashire… Thus the case is related of a woman who, attacked with the smallpox, had this dead hand in bed with her every night for six weeks, and of a poor lad living near Manchester who was touched with it for the cure of scrofulous sores.” Though not all chapters have such gruesome subjects as The Dead Hand, all are full of a curious mixture of superstition and local history that will delight and amuse the modern listener.

Bulfinch’s Mythology, first published in 1855, is one of the most popular collections of mythology of all time. It consists of three volumes: The Age of Fable, The Age of Chivalry, and Legends of Charlemagne. This is a recording of the tenth edition of the first volume, The Age of Fable. It contains many Greek and Roman myths, including simplified versions of The Iliad and The Odyssey, as well as a selection of Norse and “eastern” myths. Thomas Bulfinch’s goal was to make the ancient myths accessible to a wide audience, and so it is suitable for children.

Thomas Bulfinch (July 15, 1796 – May 27, 1867) explains the his work is “an attempt tell the stories of mythology in such a manner as to make them a source of amusement. We have endeavored to tell them correctly, according to the ancient authorities, so that when the reader finds them referred to he may not be at a loss to recognize the reference. Thus we hope to teach mythology not as a study, but as a relaxation from study; to give our work the charm of a story-book, yet by means of it to impart a knowledge of an important branch of education...

Bulfinch (July 15, 1796 - May 27, 1867) explains the his work is "an attempt tell the stories of mythology in such a manner as to make them a source of amusement. We have endeavored to tell them correctly, according to the ancient authorities, so that when the reader finds them referred to he may not be at a loss to recognize the reference. Thus we hope to teach mythology not as a study, but as a relaxation from study; to give our work the charm of a story-book, yet by means of it to impart a knowledge of an important branch of education...