The Wild Swans by Hans Christian Anderson (adapted by Delia Huddy)

Generally I am not a big fan of fairy tales but this one got me hooked. Once there lived a king (the usual story) who has eleven sons and a very attractive daughter called Elise. Their mother dies and their father marries again (the usual story). It turns out that she is a wicked queen, and she puts a spell onto the princes turning them into swans. Jealous of Elise's beauty as she matures into a young woman, the queen weaves a spell to make her her ugly and unrecognisable to her father, and Elise becomes an outcast who only has the forest for company. She sets out on a journey to find her brothers and then has to perform a very challenging tasks to free them form the spell. The text is accompanied by detailed ink drawings by Nigel Murray. It's a small book of 63 pages, so if you a looking for a lighter, quicker read, this may be the book for you. There is a short information panel about Hans Christian Anderson in the back of the book along with previews of other Walker books at the same level.

Click on the link below to watch the movie The Wild Swans which is a Russian film made in 1962, it has been dubbed into English:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r35dqhQnrL0

A little Princess by Frances Hodgson Burnett

This book is one of my all time favourites and set in the early 1900’s. It tells a story of the extremely rich and the extremely poor. It shows how differently they were treated and how much they were segregated. Sara Crew was born in India to a very rich man named Ralph Crewe, he is very close to his daughter Sara so he is very upset when he has to send her away to boarding school because at that time India wasn’t a safe place for children to live; the climate was terrible and there was a war going on. Since Sara was very wealthy she was treated very well at the boarding school, she had her own toy room, a pony, and a very extravagant wardrobe. But when Mr. Crewe dies of Brain Fever, a very common disease in India at that time, and she is told she has no money and is an orphan. Mrs. Minchin; the lady who owns the boarding school wants to throw her out on the streets, but instead she keeps her as a servant, she takes all her belongings and makes her sleep in the attic, and she deprives her of food. Then when an Indian man moves in next door to the boarding house Sara befriends him. She speaks to him in Hindi and he was very impressed, but he wasn’t really just an Indian man, he is a friend of Sara’s father. He becomes her legal guardian and keeps the fortune until she is of age. Click on the link below to watch the trailer to the movie:

http://www.videodetective.com/movies/trailers/a-little-princess-trailer/5637