Gillian Avery

A collection of poems about music and dancing, childhood and youth, love and death.

When her latest guardian dies, a twelve-year-old English girl is relieved when a distant cousin offers her a home in Italy.

While living with her sole living relative, an uncle in Oxford, eleven-year-old Maria shares an eccentric tutor with the boisterous Smith brothers and enjoys unusual outings and adventures in the English countryside.

When P. T. Barnum decides to take Jumbo to America, Aunt Louisa and the Oxford children band together to save the animal and begin The Elephant War of England.

Because of her naughtiness, Ellen is denied the privilege of seeing the Queen with her class, but she determines to see her on her own anyway.

Pressured by his father to leave school for a career he doesn't want, a nineteenth-century Manchester boy runs away and gains a new perspective on his future.

Contrasts the reality with the literary portrayal of the social conditions and daily life of various classes of Victorian people.

Eight short stories written in the nineteenth century: The Hole in the Wall, by A. Keary; The Old Story of Mrs. Howard, by Mrs. Sherwood; The Stolen Child, by Mrs. Sherwood; A Puzzle for a Curious Girl, by Anonymous; Waste Not, Want Not, or Two Strings to Your Bow, by M. Edgeworth; The Grandmother's Shoe, by J. Ingelow; The Little Rick-burners, by C. Yonge; and Snap-dragons: a Tale of Christmas Eve, by J. H. Ewing.

Biographical and autobiographical selections from early memories of school days. Includes an Irish girl's education in a convent, Madame de Maintenon's court school for the daughters of impoverished nobility, Helen Keller's teacher Annie Sullivan, and a Russian ballerina's education for the theater.

Harsh words with his uncle and a chance for a place with a wealthy Manchester family prompt thirteen-year-old Sam to leave his isolated Welsh Valley, but pride and a passion for honesty cause him to lose his job and return home, only to be branded a thief.

When her latest guardian dies, a twelve-year-old English girl is relieved when a distant cousin offers her a home in Italy.