Wonderfully nasty poems by Dr. Heinrich Hoffmann about naughty children who DON’T deserve any presents at Christmas. Four from the collection of little horrors – Shock-Headed Peter, Cruel Frederick, Dreadful Harriet, and Flying Robert.
The Rabbit Sends in a Little Bill. Alice tries to help out the white rabbit, but grows so large that she is bursting out of his house. She is besieged by small animals and has a confrontation with a enormous puppy.
This fabulous story from the Jungle Book is about a mongoose who is adopted by an English family in India. He resolutely defends the boy Teddy from the deadly cobra, Nag, and his wicked wife Nagaina.
The plucky Indian Mongoose defends an English family from the evil cobras, Nag and Nagaina. The climax on the veranda where Nagaina confronts the family at breakfast is one of the most thrilling in children’s literature.
Advice from a Caterpillar. Our shrunken heroine meets a caterpillar who infuriates her with his curt contradictions. Next she is accused by a pigeon of being a serpent, and Alice is forced to admit that she does eat eggs sometimes.
Pig and Pepper. We meet the Duchess, roughly handling a baby who looks like a pig, and the Cheshire cat who likes to vanish leaving only his grin behind. All this and two footmen who look like fish.
The Mad Hatter’s Tea Party – one of the most famous of all chapters in children’s literature – is here presented in all its wonderful lunacy. A mad March Hare, an even madder Hatter, and a dozy dormouse provide company for Alice at tea table where the party never ceases because time is stuck perpetually at 6pm.
Oscar Wilde’s fairytale of a statue and a swallow is both beautiful and sad. The statue was once a happy prince with no idea that others could be sad. Now that he is a statue, high above the city, he can see that his happiness is not shared by all. A longer story with a moral message.
The Queen’s Croquet-Ground. It is a wonder that anybody is left alive, the Queen is so busy calling for the executioners. The Queen meets her match though in the disappearing form of the Cheshire cat.
The famous story of the greatest rat-charmer of all time. Verse by Robert Browning. The reading is synced to the beautiful illustrations of Kate Greenaway (1846 – 1901).
