The Elson Readers: Book Eight

2/5 ( ratings)

Book Eight, the culmination of the Elson Reader series, is brimming with great literature with which every child and adult should be familiar. Here will be found masterworks extolling the beauty and magnificence of nature; stirring tales of adventure and mystery; inspiring poetry, speeches, and discourses on our great American experiment in liberty; and literature of life in our homeland describing the triumphs and tragedies of American history and life, classics of American humor, and tributes to American workers and their work. In this volume we hear from giants of literature such as Shakespeare, Bryant, Wordsworth, Shelley, Emerson, Garland, Poe, Masefield, Dickens, Kilmer, Kipling, Tennyson, O. Henry, and Twain; and leaders of our country like Washington, Franklin, Webster, Lincoln, Roosevelt, and Wilson. These works give readers powerful images and messages to spark their intellect and prompt them to further study and contemplation. To absorb the literature in these volumes is to take part in our literary heritage and to leave with a sense of wonder at the world around us; to appreciate the honor of service to others and our country; to find laughter in the events, great and small, of our lives and times; and to understand the thrill of real adventure. Completion of this series is the end of a long road from the rudiments of reading and grammar to the use of this new found ability to understand and describe our world. But this road does not simply end; it joins a myriad of other roads down which the reader can now confidently go.