Free Children’s Literature Online - Part 2: The Baldwin Project
The Baldwin Project is a fantastic site that offers a whole wealth of free literature. The focus is on children’s literature - but the books are well worth reading by adults too! You will find history, descriptive science, biography, and a very large collection of fairy tales, mythology and fiction. Browse by genre, by author or by title. If you are following a Waldorf or Ambleside curriculum, you will find a list of books for years 1-6 that are available on the site. There are also a number of articles and lists that will assist you in selecting books for unit studies. This is a site that offers some books that cannot be found elsewhere - for example a good selection of H.E. Marshall’s histories that are not even at Project Gutenberg at the moment.
Books are displayed one chapter at a time, with the original front matter and illustrations included. Visitors can customize displays (font & font size, background colours, etc.) Some folks have had great success printing texts straight from the site, while others prefer to read them on-screen. I often like to follow along while we listen to audio provided by Librivox.
The Baldwin Project is named for James Baldwin, an American teacher and school administrator who later went on to publish a large number of school texts and books on history, folk tale and mythology. Among his better known offerings is Fifty Famous Stories Retold, which many home-schoolers use to introduce their children to history in the earlier years.
Site owner Lisa Ripperton also publishes hard copies of the texts available online. Her publishing house is Yesterday’s Classics. You will see her offerings at Amazon (in Canada and the US) as well as through Barnes & Noble. Those who wish may purchase books directly through the site. The volumes are both affordable, and attractive. If you prefer a print copy, especially of a larger book, it doesn’t hurt to support an endeavour that gives so much to the world free of charge!
free children’s literature online.
Read on to learn about why sites like these are a good thing.
This work was created by Ruby of Freehold 2, and is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 2.5 Canada License.
Andrea Stevens said,
February 14, 2008 @ 19:15
Do you have the story ‘The Giant Builders?”
Or have you pulled it from your website?
I saw this on your website 2 weeks ago but can’t find it now.
Can you give me the URL link for it.
Thanks.
Andrea Stevens B.A., M.S., 6th year Interdisciplinary
Arts and Literature.
Professional Storyteller and poet.
Andrea Stevens said,
February 14, 2008 @ 19:16
Please look in Prt 1 the Baldwin project
ruby3881 said,
February 14, 2008 @ 21:01
Sorry Andrea, you must have the wrong site. I generally just post links here to resources homeschooling folk might find useful. I don’t have the actual content here, myself.
There is a story called “The Giant Builder” at the Baldwin Project, though. It’s a chapter of In the Days of Giants, by Abbie Farwell Brown. Don’t know if this is what you were looking for….
You can find individual stories at the Baldwin Project by browsing the Stories index.