Books published by publisher JUNIOR DELUXE EDITIONS

Hans Brinker, or The Silver Skates (full title: Hans Brinker; or, the Silver Skates: A Story of Life in Holland) is a novel by American author Mary Mapes Dodge, first published in 1865. The novel takes place in the Netherlands, and is a colorful fictional portrait of early nineteenth-century Dutch life, as well as a tale of youthful honor.The title of the book refers to the beautiful silver skates to be awarded to winner of the ice-skating race Hans Brinker hopes to enter. The novel introduced the sport of Dutch speed skating to Americans, and in U.S. media Hans Brinker is still considered the prototypical speed skater.The book is also notable for popularizing the story of the little Dutch boy who plugs a dike with his finger.

The novel tells the story of a much-beloved schoolteacher and his long tenure at Brookfield boys' public boarding school. Mr. Chipping conquers his inability to connect with his students, as well as his initial shyness, when he marries Katherine, a young woman whom he meets on vacation and who quickly picks up on calling him by his nickname, "Chips". Despite his own mediocre academic record, he goes on to have an illustrious career as an inspiring educator at Brookfield. Although the book is unabashedly sentimental, it also depicts the sweeping social changes that Chips experiences throughout his life: he begins his tenure at Brookfield in 1870, as the Franco-Prussian War is breaking out and lies on his deathbed shortly after Adolf Hitler's rise to power. He is seen as an individual who is able to connect to anyone on a human level, beyond what he (by proxy of his late wife) views as petty politics, such as the strikers, the Boers, and a German friend. Clearly discernible is a nostalgia for the Victorian social order that had faded rapidly after Queen Victoria's death in 1901 and whose remnants were destroyed by the First World War. Indeed, a recurring motif is the devastating impact of the war on British society. When World War I breaks out, Chips, who had retired the year before at age 65, agrees to come out of retirement to fill in for the various masters who have entered military service. Despite his being taken for a doddering fossil, it is Chips who keeps his wits about him during an air raid, averting mass panic and sustaining morale. Countless old boys and masters die on the battlefield, and much of the story involves Chips's response to the horrors unleashed by the war. At one point, he reads aloud a long roster of the school's fallen alumni, and, defying the modern world he sees as soulless and lacking transcendent values of honor and friendship, dares to include the name of a German former master who has died fighting on the opposite side.

Freckles is a novel written by the American writer and naturalist Gene Stratton-Porter. It is primarily set in the Limberlost Swamp area of Indiana, with brief scenes set in Chicago. The title character also appears briefly in Porter's A Girl of the Limberlost. The novel is marked by its frequent, detailed, and loving descriptions of the flora and fauna of the wilderness through the eyes of its innocent protagonist. The author, Gene Stratton-Porter (1863-1924), was an American author, early naturalist, nature photographer, and one of the first women to form a movie studio and production company, Gene Stratton-Porter Productions, Inc. She wrote several best-selling novels and well-received columns in national magazines, such as McCall's. Her works were translated into several languages, including Braille, and Stratton-Porter was estimated to have had 50 million readers around the world. The illustrator, Ruth Ives, also illustrated the Junior Deluxe Editions of Louisa May Alcott’s books.