Publisher Description
This beautifully packaged set includes five classic masterpieces. Each exquisitely bound volume features charming four-color illustrations, a ribbon marker, and gorgeous design elements throughout. Housed in a keepsake slipcase with a magnetic closure, it’s a collection meant to be cherished for a lifetime.
Readers set out with timid Mole as he explores the world, learning about courage and friendship through a series of misadventures with Rat, Toad, and Badger in The Wind in the Willows. From the River Bank, tumble down the rabbit hole with Alice to a madcap world where nonsense rules in Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. From Victorian England, it’s on to a small New England town in Little Women, where Jo March and her three sisters struggle to achieve their dreams amid the shifting roles of women in the Civil War era. Sent to live with her uncle, orphan Mary Lennox uncovers the mysteries of Misselthwaite Manor in The Secret Garden. Readers then journey through the English countryside and London with a gentle, hardworking horse who experiences kindness and cruelty at the hands of different masters in Black Beauty.
Whether encountering these cherished tales for the first or the fiftieth time, readers will find enchantment in this collection.
Product Features:
- Embossed slipcase with magnetic closure
- Five hardcover volumes each featuring a ribbon marker and four-color illustration throughout
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About the Authors
Lewis Carroll was the pen name of Charles Lutwidge Dodgson (1832–1898), English author, mathematician, and photographer. One of eleven children of a scholarly country parson, he studied mathematics at Oxford, obtained a university post, and then was ordained as a deacon but found true success with his masterpiece, Alice’s Adventures Under Ground, now known as Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, which originated as a story told to a young friend, Alice Liddell, during a boating trip on the Thames. Among his other works are Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There, The Hunting of the Snark, and Jabberwocky.
Kenneth Grahame (1859–1932), Scottish-born author, was raised by his grandmother in Berkshire, England, along the banks of the Thames River. He began working at the Bank of England in 1879. As a pastime, he wrote light nonfiction and articles for newspapers. The Wind in the Willows, originally written as letters to his son, established him as a writer of children’s books and had a deep influence on fantasy literature.
Anna Sewell (1820–1878) was born in England. A knee injury at fourteen left her disabled, but she rode and drove horses very well. She began learning about horses early in life, spending many hours driving her father to and from the station from which he commuted to work. Her dependence on horse-drawn transportation fostered her respect of horses. She wrote her one book, Black Beauty, in her fifties, and it was published in 1877 just five months before she died. Although it is now considered a children’s classic, she originally wrote it for those who worked with horses. She said “a special aim [was] to induce kindness, sympathy, and an understanding treatment of horses.” The book has had a tremendous impact in creating a new wave of humane thinking towards animals.
Louisa May Alcott (1832–1888) was born in Germantown, Pennsylvania. Educated by her father until she was sixteen, she also studied under Henry David Thoreau, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and Theodore Parker. A prolific writer, her most famous work was Little Women, a timeless American classic.
Frances Hodgson Burnett (1849–1924) was an English-born author of romances and books for children. After moving to America in 1865, she established a popular reputation with the publication of That Lass o’ Lowrie’s in 1877. She is best known for such novels as Little Lord Fauntleroy, A Little Princess, and The Secret Garden.
Hans Christian Andersen (1805–1875) was born in Odense, Denmark, the son of a poor shoemaker and a washerwoman. As a young teenager, he became quite well known in Odense as a reciter of drama and as a singer. When he was fourteen, he set off for the capital, Copenhagen, determined to become a national success on the stage. He failed miserably, but made some influential friends in the capital who got him into school to remedy his lack of proper education. In 1829 his first book was published. After that, books came out at regular intervals. His stories began to be translated into English as early as 1846. Since then, numerous editions, and more recently Hollywood songs and Disney cartoons, have helped to ensure the continuing popularity of the stories in the English-speaking world.
About the Narrators
Michael Page has been recording audiobooks since 1984 and has over two hundred titles to his credit. He has won numerous Earphones Awards and the prestigious Audie Award for best narration. As a professional actor, he has performed regularly since 1998 with the Peterborough Players in Peterborough, New Hampshire. He is a professor of theater at Calvin College in Grand Rapids, Michigan.
Sandra Burr is an AudioFile Earphones Award–wining narrator. She has read more than one hundred books in her career, including the New York Times bestselling Cedar Cove romance series by Debbie Macomber.
Simon Vance (a.k.a. Robert Whitfield) is an award-winning actor and narrator. He has earned more than fifty Earphones Awards and won the prestigious Audie Award for best narration thirteen times. He was named Booklist’s very first Voice of Choice in 2008 and has been named an AudioFile Golden Voice as well as an AudioFile Best Voice of 2009. He has narrated more than eight hundred audiobooks over almost thirty years, beginning when he was a radio newsreader for the BBC in London. He is also an actor who has appeared on both stage and television.
Susan Duerden is an actress and an Earphones Award–winning audiobook narrator. Her reading of The Tiger’s Wife by Téa Obreht earned her an AudioFile Best Voice Award and a Booklist Editors’ Choice Award. She has won ten AudioFile Earphones Awards. Here career spans film, television, theater, voice-overs, and animation. She has played critically acclaimed and award-winning theatrical roles on London’s West End and Off Broadway; acted in the features Lovewrecked and Flushed Away; and held a recurring role on ABC’s Lost.
Neil Hellegers grew up in New Jersey and attended the University of Pennsylvania, where he earned a BA in theater arts and a minor in psychology before getting an MFA in acting from the Trinity Rep Conservatory in Providence, Rhode Island. He moved to New York City in 2003 and, since then, has made a career of theatrical performance, percussion, theater education, and audiobook narration. He currently lives in Brooklyn with his wife and son.