Books in Oxford Books of Prose series

The stories of magic and transformation that we call fairy tales are one of the oldest known forms of literature, and also one of the most popular and enduring. While most people think of the fairy tale as having come into existence almost magically long ago, they are in fact still being created. And while they are principally directed to children and have child protagonists, these modern fairy tales, like the classics, have messages to those of all ages. In The Oxford Book of Modern Fairy Tales, editor Alison Lurie collects such modern stories of the late nineteenth century up to the present. Here are trolls and princesses, magic and mayhem, morals to be told and lessons to be learned--all the elements of the classic fairy tale, in new and marvelous stories. Including the works of Charles Dickens, Nathaniel Hawthorne, George MacDonald, Mary De Morgan, H.G. Wells, Robert Louis Stevenson, Joan Aiken, Carl Sandburg, Angela Carter, James Thurber, Louise Erdrich, and many more, here is a treasury of tales that, though set in an unreal and irrelevant universe, have much to tell us about the real world in which we live.

This anthology brings together the outstanding verse written for children over a period of five hundred years. It contains more than 300 poems written by 123 authors, and includes the rhymed precepts of medieval times, the admonitory verse of Elizabethan Puritans, the inspirational verse of Blake and Christopher Smart, the nonsense verses of Edward Lear and Lewis Carroll, the nursery verses of Robert Louis Stevenson and A. A. Milne, and the poetical imaginings of Christina Rossetti, Eleanor Farjeon, and Walter de la Mare. It has truly been called "A companion to the mature of all ages, no matter how young."

Covering a vast historical range, this anthology is the only book to document the evolution of the children's story in writing over the last 250 years. Jan Mark, herself an accomplished children's author, has selected an inspired sampling of children's stories--44 in all--that brings us both the best-loved and widely-read stories from our youth as well as those gems of storytelling long lost to our children's sleepy bedtime ears. Tracing the evolution of the children's short story from 1749 to the 1990s, the collection includes the work of familiar figures like Rudyard Kipling, Louisa May Alcott, Evelyn Nesbit, Christina Rossetti, Walter de la Mare, and Philippa Pearce, along with those long-forgotten tales that have the power to revive the majesty of childhood imagination. Along the way, Mark shows that despite the varied history of children's writing, the ingredients of a good children's story--magic, mystery, and enchantment--have remained constant, and that they can still captivate the minds of children (and parents) today.

The world of children's poetry is as diverse and as miraculous as the human imagination itself, a land where owls and pussy-cats set to sea in beautiful pea-green boats, and tigers burn bright in the forests of the night. It embraces word play, parody, nonsense, lullaby, and elegy, and ranges from brief nursery rhymes to long narratives. It can be utterly silly, but it also recognizes that if children's lives are full of wonder and delight, they are also fraught with worries, disappointments, and moments of sadness. The best children's poets come to terms with grief as well as joy. Now, in The New Oxford Book of Children's Verse, Neil Philip has surveyed and mapped this delightfully protean landscape, in a book that spans some two hundred and fifty years, from Isaac Watts, the first true children's poet, to such classic figures as Lewis Carroll, Edward Lear, and A. A. Milne, to scores of contemporary writers, such as Richard Wilbur, Sandra Cisneros, and Jack Prelutsky. The range of poems is remarkable. Young readers will find long narratives such as Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's "Paul Revere's Ride" ("Listen, my children, and you shall hear / Of the midnight ride of Paul Revere") and Robert Browning's "Pied Piper of Hamelin" ("Rats! / They fought the dogs and killed the cats") as well as Mick Gowar's "Rat Trap," a political satire that parodies Browning's poem. The book also includes many miniature gems, such as Ogden Nash's "The Eel" ("I don't mind eels / Except at meals, / And the way they feels") and Hughes Mearns's "The Little Man" ("As I was walking up the stair / I met a man who wasn't there; / He wasn't there again today. / I wish, I wish he'd stay away"). There is of course much zany verse, such as Hilaire Belloc's "Jim, Who Ran Away from His Nurse, and was Eaten by a Lion" ("Now, just imagine how it feels / When first your toes and then your heels, / And then by gradual degrees, / Your shins and ankles, calves and knees, / Are slowly eaten, bit by bit. / No wonder Jim detested it!"), Eugene Field's classic "The Duel" ("The gingham dog and the calico cat / Side by side on the table sat"), and A.A. Milne's "Disobedience" ("James James / Morrison Morrison / Weatherby George Dupree / Took great / Care of his Mother, / Though he was only three"). And Philip has also included many thought-provoking poems, such as Langston Hughes's "Children's Rhymes" ("By what sends / the white kids / I ain't sent: / I know I can't / be President"), Countee Cullen's "Incident" ("Now I was eight and very small, / And he was no whit bigger, / And so I smiled, but he poked out / His tongue, and called me, 'Nigger'"), and Theodore Roethke's "My Papa's Waltz" ("The whiskey on your breath / Could make a small boy dizzy; / But I hung on like death: / Such waltzing was not easy"). Ranging from Lewis Carroll's "Jabberwocky," to Robert Frost's "The Pasture," to John Updike's "January," here is an anthology that captures the full breadth of children's verse in English. It will delight children of all ages, and launch the young on a life-long appreciation of poetry.

A worthy companion to The Oxford Book of English Verse, this anthology covers, in 571 selections, the whole range of American poetry from colonial times; more than half of it is devoted to the best work of the period from 1900 to 1950. Fifty-one poets represented--deliberately fewer than in most anthologies, so that sufficient space can be devoted to each poet to afford a real understanding of his or her work. More recent and less well-known poets are represented wherever possible by works of some length rather than by a scattering of short poems. Brief biographical notes at the end enable the reader to know in what volume of the poet's work each poem originally appeared.

In the tradition of Iona and Peter Opie's Oxford Book of Children's Verse comes this anthology by the award-winning poet and children's book author Donald Hall. Bringing together "poems written for children and also poems written for anybody which children have enjoyed," the book includes anonymous works, ballads, and recitation pieces, beginning with the Calvinist verses of the seventeenth century.Hall has collected poems from Sunday School magazines, Christmas annuals for children, and children's periodicals such as St. Nicholas and Youth's Companion. Many marvelous writers, some no longer remembered, wrote almost every month for these nineteenth and twentieth century publications. In addition to the expected names of Longfellow and Whittier, we find Sarah Josepha Hale ("Mary Had a Little Lamb"), Mary Mapes Dodge (creator of Hans Brinker), and Palmer Cox (with his marvelous Brownies). Twentieth century authors abound: Ogden Nash, T.S. Eliot, John Updike, Theodore Roethke, to name just a few. The book concludes with the fabulous nonsense of present-day writers like Shel Silverstein and Nancy Willard.About the Editor:Donald Hall's many books include The Oxford Book of American Literary Anecdotes, Kicking the Leaves, and Ox-Cart Man, which won the Caldecott Medal for children's literature.

The world of children's poetry is as diverse and as miraculous as the human imagination itself, a land where owls and pussy-cats set to sea in beautiful pea-green boats, and tigers burn bright in the forests of the night. It embraces word play, parody, nonsense, lullaby, and elegy, and ranges from brief nursery rhymes to long narratives. It can be utterly silly, but it also recognizes that if children's lives are full of wonder and delight, they are also fraught with worries, disappointments, and moments of sadness. The best children's poets come to terms with grief as well as joy. Now, in The New Oxford Book of Children's Verse, Neil Philip has surveyed and mapped this delightfully protean landscape, in a book that spans some two hundred and fifty years, from Isaac Watts, the first true children's poet, to such classic figures as Lewis Carroll, Edward Lear, and A. A. Milne, to scores of contemporary writers, such as Richard Wilbur, Sandra Cisneros, and Jack Prelutsky. The range of poems is remarkable. Young readers will find long narratives such as Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's "Paul Revere's Ride" ("Listen, my children, and you shall hear / Of the midnight ride of Paul Revere") and Robert Browning's "Pied Piper of Hamelin" ("Rats! / They fought the dogs and killed the cats") as well as Mick Gowar's "Rat Trap," a political satire that parodies Browning's poem. The book also includes many miniature gems, such as Ogden Nash's "The Eel" ("I don't mind eels / Except at meals, / And the way they feels") and Hughes Mearns's "The Little Man" ("As I was walking up the stair / I met a man who wasn't there; / He wasn't there again today. / I wish, I wish he'd stay away"). There is of course much zany verse, such as Hilaire Belloc's "Jim, Who Ran Away from His Nurse, and was Eaten by a Lion" ("Now, just imagine how it feels / When first your toes and then your heels, / And then by gradual degrees, / Your shins and ankles, calves and knees, / Are slowly eaten, bit by bit. / No wonder Jim detested it!"), Eugene Field's classic "The Duel" ("The gingham dog and the calico cat / Side by side on the table sat"), and A.A. Milne's "Disobedience" ("James James / Morrison Morrison / Weatherby George Dupree / Took great / Care of his Mother, / Though he was only three"). And Philip has also included many thought-provoking poems, such as Langston Hughes's "Children's Rhymes" ("By what sends / the white kids / I ain't sent: / I know I can't / be President"), Countee Cullen's "Incident" ("Now I was eight and very small, / And he was no whit bigger, / And so I smiled, but he poked out / His tongue, and called me, 'Nigger'"), and Theodore Roethke's "My Papa's Waltz" ("The whiskey on your breath / Could make a small boy dizzy; / But I hung on like death: / Such waltzing was not easy"). Ranging from Lewis Carroll's "Jabberwocky," to Robert Frost's "The Pasture," to John Updike's "January," here is an anthology that captures the full breadth of children's verse in English. It will delight children of all ages, and launch the young on a life-long appreciation of poetry.