I've been the resident playwright at First Stage Children’s Theater in Milwaukee for over twenty years. I began my career by adapting classic titles for the stage: Little House Christmas, Treasure Island, Huck Finn, Through the Looking Glass, Tom Sawyer. As I researched previous adaptions of these novels, I discovered how so many of them were quite different from the author’s original intentions. I don’t feel these adaptations are 'bad,' by any means—in fact, I believe you have to break free of a novel to truly adapt it for a different medium—but often the 'adaptation' is the only part of the story that gets passed down to us.
I remember the first time someone told me to read this book, and I replied, “Bambi? Really? No thank you.” I, of course, had only known the Disney-ized version of the story. I assumed it was a book for toddlers, with cute little bunny rabbits and birds singing in the trees. I was very wrong. It is a profound coming-of-age story dealing with family, love, parents, adulthood, loss, intolerance, death, betrayal, and the horrors which humans can inflict on both the environment and each other. It was banned and burned in Germany in 1936 as it was seen as a political allegory of the Nazi Party. A powerful book, and, unfortunately, still a very timely one.
Immerse yourself in a young deer's world in this resplendent, collectible edition of the richly imagined and vividly illustrated masterpiece that inspired the beloved Disney film.
Bambi lives in a thicket in the forest. From his kind and caring mother, to all the friends he makes among the forest's inhabitants, to his twin cousins Faline and Gobo, he is surrounded by animals who wish him well. But there are dangers within and surrounding the forest, and all too soon they will make themselves known.
A beautifully written and critically acclaimed classic that has been translated into more than twenty languages…
Most people only know the term ‘Pollyanna’ from its dictionary definition: “an excessively or blindly optimistic person.” We think of a cutesy, ebullient, ever-happy individual with no worries in the world, almost ‘blind’ to reality. The real Pollyanna, in this book by Ms. Porter, is anything but blind. As Pollyanna holds herself to a death-bed promise made to her father, she activelychooses optimism over pessimism when faced with the hardships of life. And it is certainly not always easy for her. She struggles to avoid despair by searching for the good in even the most difficult of circumstances. It is a book about resilience, belief, kindness...and hope.
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As soon as Pollyanna arrives in Beldingsville to live with her strict and dutiful maiden aunt, she begins to brighten up everybody's life. The 'glad game' she plays, of finding a silver lining in every cloud, transforms the sick, the lonely and the plain miserable - until one day something so terrible happens that even Pollyanna doesn't know how to feel glad about it.
In a world ravaged by an inexplicable plague, society lies in ruins. Amidst the desolation, a lone survivor perseveres in a secluded state park along the Delaware Coast. Over a year has passed since she lost everything, yet as the sanctuary she’s carved for herself begins to crumble, she must…
If you’ve only seen the Disney movie, TheSword in the Stone (the first part of this book) then you will be wonderfully surprised when you read this book. It may appear from the title to be just another version of King Arthur and his round table of Knights battling dragons and green knights, but it is so much more than that. It is at times hilarious, magical, heartbreaking, tragic—and yet, at its center, it is a profound political allegory about government, political leadership, and the horrors of war.
Voyager Classics - timeless masterworks of science fiction and fantasy.
A beautiful clothbound edition of The Once and Future King, White's masterful retelling of the Arthurian legend.
T.H. White's masterful retelling of the Arthurian legend is an abiding classic. Here all five volumes that make up the story are published together in a single volume, as White himself always wished.
Here is King Arthur and his shining Camelot, beasts who talk and men who fly; knights, wizardry and war. It is the book of all things lost and wonderful and sad; the masterpiece of fantasy by which all others are…
Disney got their hands on this title too. Mickey Mouse starred in it.
Mark Twain, in nearly all his writings, continually attacked the hypocrisies found in humankind and society, and never more so than in this book. It is a very fun read—witty, sarcastic, comic—but also a scathing attack against injustice and intolerance. It champions fairness and equality and denounces those who judge others by appearance only. It promotes the idea that all those who make laws, and profess them, should also be subject to them. I wish every political leader would read this book.
The Prince and the Pauper is a classic adventure of mistaken identity set in Tudor London and told with Mark Twain's trademark humour and concern for social justice.
Part of the Macmillan Collector's Library; a series of stunning, clothbound, pocket sized classics with gold foiled edges and ribbon markers. These beautiful books make perfect gifts or a treat for any book lover. This edition has an afterword by author and journalist Nicolette Jones.
Penniless Tom Canty wonders what it would be like to be a prince. Heir to the throne Edward Tudor dreams of a life outside the royal palace…
The constellation we know as Taurus goes all the way back to cave paintings of aurochs at Lascaux. This book traces the story of the bull in the sky, a journey through the history of what has become known as the sacred bull.
Mary Shelly wrote Frankenstein when she was only a teenager herself (18). The ‘Creature’ she created is the ultimate ‘other.’ Persecuted and abandoned by the community, he yearns to know why he is hated and what his place and purpose is in the world. Shunned by all and loved by none, he eventually turns to violence.
“I am malicious because I am miserable.
Am I not shunned and hated by all mankind?”
So many relevant themes run through this book: intolerance, injustice, science without ethical boundaries, technical advances based on greed, prejudice, hubris, scientific responsibility, parental responsibility, bigotry, and hatred. The story is all too frighteningly relevant today.
One of the BBC's '100 Novels That Shaped Our World'
'That rare story to pass from literature into myth' The New York Times
Mary Shelley's chilling Gothic tale was conceived when she was only eighteen, living with her lover Percy Shelley on Lake Geneva. The story of Victor Frankenstein who, obsessed with creating life itself, plunders graveyards for the material to fashion a new being, but whose botched creature sets out to destroy his maker, would become the world's most famous work of horror fiction, and remains a devastating exploration of the limits of human creativity. Based on the third…
Marena struggles to remember what life was like before the Zero Tolerance Party installed listening devices in every home. Before they murdered her mother and put her father under house arrest. A time when difference was celebrated. When the new Minister of Education cracks down in her school, eliminating personal expression and independent thought, Marena decides she has to fight back.
The Silenced draws on the true story of Sophie Scholl and the White Rose, a movement that courageously resisted the Nazis. In an era when new technologies are accompanied by increasing surveillance, this is a powerfully relevant story of the enormous change that is possible when one person is courageous enough to speak the truth to power.
This book is an elegiac meditation on the will to survive. Tor, a beluga whaler, and his wife, Astrid, a botanist specializing in Arctic flora, are stranded during the dark season of 1937-38 at his remote whaling station in the Svalbard archipelago when they misjudge ice conditions and fail to…
David Fletcher needs a surgeon, stat! But when he captures a British merchantman in the Caribbean, what he gets is Charley Alcott, an apprentice physician barely old enough to shave. Needs must, and Captain Fletcher takes the prisoner back aboard his ship with orders to do his best or he’ll…
