Catherine Mustread’s Reviews > Famous Stories Every Child Should Know: A Selection of the Best Stories of All Times for Young People > Status Update

'Peter Rugg, the Missing Man' by William Austin. Set in 1820, Peter Rugg, a famous traveling "storm-breeder," and a child, always seeking Boston, seem to bring on storms. Interestingly, both Peter and the child have been missing some 50 years since they were lost in a storm.

'Rab and His Friends' by John Brown, M.D. An 1859 story by a Scottish physician about a huge mastiff dog and a lady dying of cancer, a bit gruesome.

The Nuernberg Stove by Louise de la Ramée. My favorite story yet. A young boy is so strongly attached to an antique stove he travels with it when the stove is sold, meets the king and his life is forever changed.

"The Man Without a Country" by Edward Everett Hale - the one story I remember being required to read, although my memory of the plot was zilch. More dated than others, naval and social terms especially, but also more emotional, patriotic, and religious. References the year 1830 toward the end of Nolan's life.

'The Story of Ruth' From the Bible, Book of Ruth. Just a bit presumptuous that a Bible story should be in a book that 'every child should know.' Confirms the arrogance of Christians? Or maybe the title should be 'stories every Christian child should know.' Segment #57 of 116.

"Undine" by Friedrich, Baron de la Motte Fouqué (1811) -- an early German romantic fairy story about a water spirit who is switched as a child with a fisherman's child. Very popular in the 1800s. (Segments 24-54)

In Snow Image by Nathanial Hawthorne a snow child magically comes alive, "... it behooves men, and especially men of benevolence, to consider well what they are about, and, before acting on their philanthropic purposes, to be quite sure that they comprehend the nature and all the relations of the business in hand. What has been established as an element of good to one may prove [harmful] to another."

Second story: THE KING OF THE GOLDEN RIVER; OR, THE BLACK BROTHERS by John Ruskin. Started out overwhelming me with flowery old-fashioned language but sucked me into the quite predictable fairy-tale like plot. Best story so far!

First story is A CHILD'S DREAM OF A STAR by Charles Dickens. Dickens told one of his biographers that as a child he used to wander at night about a churchyard, near their home, with his sister. This sister died two years before this was written. May be compared with Lamb’s 'Dream-Children” and with Andersen’s “Steadfast Tin Soldier.” All three are fantasies; all three deal with childhood; all three are poet