Archive for June, 2011

Kids’ Classic Summer Reading on DailyLit (Part 1: Kindergarten through 6th Grade)

As kids start to let out from school, I thought I’d highlight certain classic books for kids available (for free) on DailyLit. These books are recommended summer reads by the National Endowment for the Humanities. Note that this is the first of a three-part series. In this post, I’ll cover books appropriate for kids in Kindergarten through the 6th grade. In the next post, I’ll cover books for kids in the 7th and 8th grades, and in the third post, I’ll focus on books appropriate for kids in high school.

Kindergarten to 3rd Grade
Note that these books can be read by the kids themselves or read aloud to them.

-Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland
-Beatrix Potter’s The Tale of Peter Rabbit — you can find this and other stories by Beatrix Potter here

Grades 4 through 6

-Hans Christian Andersen’s Fairy Tales
-Frank L. Baum’s The Wonderful Wizard of Oz
-Frances Hodgson’s Burnett’s The Secret Garden
-Kenneth Grahame’s The Wind in the Willows
-Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm’s The Complete Grimm’s Fairy Tales (Hänsel and Gretel, Rapunzel, etc.)
-Rudyard Kipling’s The Jungle Book
-L.M. Montgomery’s Anne of Green Gables
-Charles Perrault’s The Tales of Mother Goose (Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty, etc.)
-Johann David Wyss’ Swiss Family Robinson

Stay tuned for posts on DailyLit classic books recommended for kids in the 7th and 8th grades as well as books for kids in high school.

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DailyLit is the leading publisher of serialized books in digital form. Selected to be the #1 Book Website by the Sunday Times, DailyLit has sent over 40 million book installments. DailyLit’s books and series are all free and feature bestselling and award-winning titles. Installments can be read in fewer than 5 minutes and can be read wherever you receive email, including on any computer, Blackberry, or iPhone.

DailyLit Seeking Great First Line to Kick off Creative Challenge

For our upcoming creative challenge, DailyLit reader dvoizin suggested the following: “what if a story line was started (by DailyLit) and each member were able to add to it to create a multiple authored story? Might have some interesting twist & turns…?”

I originally thought that Margaret Atwood could write that first line, but she suggested that we use a great line from a classic book (e.g. “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times” or “Call me Ishmael”). I like that suggestion but thought I’d let you decide which great first line we should use to start us off.

So, any ideas? What’s a great first line should we use to kick off our chain? You can enter it here.

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DailyLit is the leading publisher of serialized books in digital form. Selected to be the #1 Book Website by the Sunday Times, DailyLit has sent over 40 million book installments. DailyLit’s books and series are all free and feature bestselling and award-winning titles. Installments can be read in fewer than 5 minutes and can be read wherever you receive email, including on any computer, Blackberry, or iPhone.

Happy B’day Thomas Mann: DailyLit Celebrates Books in German

In honor of Thomas Mann’s birthday, DailyLit is celebrating books in their original German language.

I wish my Goethe Institute training in German had prepared me for the task of tackling these books in their original German; unfortunately, I’ll need to leave it to you the rest of you Germanophiles. Here are a few (free of course on DailyLit):

-Thomas Mann’s Der Tod in Venedig (Death in Venice)

-Immanuel Kant’s Kritik der reinen Vernunft (The Critique of Pure Reason); you can find Kant’s The Critique of Practical Reason in an English translation on DailyLit here.

-Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s Die Leiden des jungen Werther (The Sorrows of Young Werther); also available in an English translation on DailyLit here.

You can find other books available in German here on DailyLit.

Alles Gute zum Geburtstag — that is, happy birthday — Thomas Mann!

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DailyLit is the leading publisher of serialized books in digital form. Selected to be the #1 Book Website by the Sunday Times, DailyLit has sent over 40 million book installments. DailyLit’s books and series are all free and feature bestselling and award-winning titles. Installments can be read in fewer than 5 minutes and can be read wherever you receive email, including on any computer, Blackberry, or iPhone.

DailyLit’s Weekly Question Altered to Avoid Spam Filters

DailyLit’s Question of the Week this week is: what’s the sexiest meal you’ve ever had? It was inspired by Fielding’s Tom Jones and suggested by DailyLit reader, dreamdust (thanks, dreamdust!)

But there was a problem. Since Questions of the Week are included in email installments that can easily be trapped by spam filters, the question needed to be altered so that “sex” was not part of it. To give you some sense of DailyLit’s spam challenges, an installment from Shakespeare’s Hamlet that read “The morning cock crew loud” has been blocked by spam filters.

So, to avoid these traps, the question in installments now reads: “what’s the most sensual meal you’ve ever had?” I’m hoping this does the trick.

OK now, what was your sexiest meal? Enter it here.

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DailyLit is the leading publisher of serialized books in digital form. Selected to be the #1 Book Website by the Sunday Times, DailyLit has sent over 40 million book installments. DailyLit’s books and series are all free and feature bestselling and award-winning titles. Installments can be read in fewer than 5 minutes and can be read wherever you receive email, including on any computer, Blackberry, or iPhone.

Happy 1st (from DailyLit)!

Before I let the first of June go by, I wanted to wish you all a happy 1st of the month. In my family, we say, “rabbit, rabbit” first thing on the first day of any month, which brings good luck for the month (sorry, too late now for you — at least this month).

My office mate from England just mentioned that in England, they say “pinch, punch, first of the month,” accompanied by a pinch and a punch to the victim.

I prefer rabbit, rabbit.

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DailyLit is the leading publisher of serialized books in digital form. Selected to be the #1 Book Website by the Sunday Times, DailyLit has sent over 40 million book installments. DailyLit’s books and series are all free and feature bestselling and award-winning titles. Installments can be read in fewer than 5 minutes and can be read wherever you receive email, including on any computer, Blackberry, or iPhone.

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