Youth literature

The Russian Czar is informed during a formal diplomatic reception in the Kremlin that a great invasion of hundreds of thousands of Tartar troops is menacing Russian positions and towns throughout Siberia, and that the Czar’s brother, the Grand-Duke, is in great danger in the eastern Siberian town of Irkutsk where he had gone on a mission. The Czar commissions one of his most trusted officers, Michael Strogoff, to carry a missive to the Grand-Dule to warn him that an infamous traitor and (…)

Phileas Fogg is a distinguished albeit somewhat reclusive and mysterious member of the prestigious Reform Club in London who enters into a debate with his partners at the whist table about an article in a leading paper that had declared that with modern technology it was now possible to travel right around the world in a mere 80 days – assuming that there were no unexpected delays, that the steamships and railways always maintained their schedules and that the traveller made all the (…)

A group of Unionist prisoners in the besieged Confederate capital of Richmond escapes in a balloon in the middle of a hurricane-level storm only to find themselves driven many thousands of miles into an unknown part of the south Pacific, where they manage finally to land nearby an uncharted island. Under the guidance of their supremely competent engineer-leader, the group manages to not only survive but to prosper – until their very existence is threatened by brutal invaders and by natural (…)

This remarkable adventure story with a strong scientific-exploration bent has somehow retained its credibility and readability so many years later in spite of the phenomenal advances made since Verne’s day in engineering and natural science, thanks to his unerring talent for creating drama and excitement at the wonders of nature and the unlimited perspectives for scientific and technological progress.
And above all thanks to his knack for telling a marvellous story with pace and enthusiasm (…)

The brothers Jacob Grimm (1785-1863) and Wilhelm Grimm (1786-1859), co-authors of an extremely monumental modern German-language dictionary, are first and foremost renowned in the academic circles of their homeland as two of the main founders of German philology.
But of course among us lesser mortals they are best known for their remarkable collection of popular tales that they published in two volumes in 1812 and 1815.
We present here three of the best tales, selected it is true largely (…)

Marie’s godfather is a very talented watchmaker who gives his grandchildren a castle with a marvellous set of animated figures on Christmas Eve – and a strangely realistic little figure with a large head that can crack nuts with its teeth. These presents are carefully put away by the parents for safekeeping out of reach of the children in a large showcase in the front hall, and Marie lingers there at midnight to admire them when she sees a group of mice led by their strange seven-headed king (…)

Dr. Heinrich Hoffman (1809-1894) drew this sketchbook with verse lessons for his three-year-old son as a Christmas present for him in 1844, after having been unable to find any books able to really interest someone of that age in the bookstores in his town of Frankfurt – they were all either too long, too boring, too stodgily moralistic, too full of adult vocabulary or, mostly, all of that together.
He was at the time the psychiatrist at the city’s Institute for the Mentally Ill – this is (…)

Written in 1862 by the Oxford lecturer in mathematics Charles Dodgson (1832-1898) to amuse Alice Liddell, one of the daughters of the dean of his Christ Church faculty, this brilliant, inventive, very original and very funny tale gained immediate world-wide attention when it was published in 1865 under the pen-name Lewis Carroll.
With its subtle psychology, its insights into the world of childhood, its linguistic creativity and its clever wit it has become one of the best-known and most (…)

Lewis Carroll’s wonderful sequel to "Alice in Wonderland" where Alice meets Humpty Dumpty, Tweedledum and Tweedledee, the Red and Black Queens and Knights, Tiger-Lily, the Walrus and the Carpenter, the Frog and the Gnat and the Lion and the Unicorn and talking flowers and so many other aspects of life – and language – on the other side of the mirror.
An all-time classic, thoroughly imbued with the charm and linguistic subtleties of Lewis Carroll’s inimitable style and imagination, as (…)

Rudyard Kipling’s celebrated stories about life in the jungles of India, featuring notably the story of the abandoned boy Mowgli who has been adopted by a wolf pack, recounting his adventures with many other animals, notably the tiger Shere Khan, Baloo the bear and Kaa the python.
The other tales – all most charming and even instructive, and all with a distinctive poetical touch – involve the struggle of seals to survive the menace of mankind, the mongoose Rikki-Tikki-Tavi and his epic (…)