Books with title The Water Babies

The Water-Babies, A Fairy Tale for a Land Baby is a children's novel by Charles Kingsley. Written in 1862–63 as a serial for Macmillan's Magazine, it was first published in its entirety in 1863. It was written as part satire in support of Charles Darwin's The Origin of Species. The book was extremely popular in England, and was a mainstay of British children's literature for many decades, but eventually fell out of favour in part due to its prejudices (common at the time) against Irish, Jews, Catholics and Americans

Charles Kingsley was an English clergyman, professor, historian and novelist who felt a great concern for social reform, particularly regarding child labor practices. Having read Darwin's "On the Origin of the Species", he was also a proponent of the theory of evolution; however, he credited evolution to God, proposing that science and Christian faith could exist harmoniously. Kingsley encouraged an open-minded attitude, and the willingness to use one's imagination. His 1863 classic, "The Water Babies", is a sort of fairy tale about a boy chimney sweep who drowns in a river, and is there transformed into a "water baby." The story relates the moral education that Tom receives in a series of adventures and lessons among the community of water babies. Kingsley expresses his concerns with child labor, as well as his ideas on Christian redemption, in this entertaining and somewhat satirical story.

Charles Kingsley: The Water Babies When Tom, an ill-treated little chimney-sweep, jumps into a clear, cool stream to clean himself something magical happens; he is turned into a tiny water baby by the fairies. He enters a strange, magical underwater world, and travels beyond the world's end to the other end-of-nowhere, getting into all sorts of scrapes and encountering creatures beautiful and frightening along the way. He also learns many important lessons - it is a voyage of discovery that Tom will never forget. The Journey of a little chimney-sweep water-baby through rivers and storms, under sea and over iceberg, is still a classic, wonderful children's adventure

"The Water-Babies" by Charles Kingsley is best described with reference to J. M. Barrie's more famous work "Peter Pan", both of which belong in the canon of Victorian fairytales. Kingsley's work is poised between two words: the world of Christianity and the whimsical realm of fairies, and the onset of the scientific and historical developments that resulted in the evolution theory, industrial factories and the War. Although certainly not as famous as Barrie's tale of the boy that never grew up, Kingsley's story is equally fascinating, though a bit more difficult to read.

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