BDeBooks
The Wonder Clock by Howard Pyle, book cover
Childrens Classics PDF EPUB Audio

The Wonder Clock

by Howard Pyle

Downloads
Under 100
First published
1888
Pages
279
Download

Listen to The Wonder Clock Audiobook Free

Read by Maria Kasper, Kara Shallenberg (1969-2023), Michelle Crandall and others · 6 h 59 min · 24 parts

  1. Preface and Bearskin

    24:52

  2. The Water of Life

    13:44

  3. How One Turned his Trouble to Some Account

    15:16

  4. How Three Went out into the Wide World

    8:22

  5. The Clever Student and the Master of Black Arts

    15:27

  6. The Princess Golden Hair and the Great Black Raven

    17:30

  7. Cousin Greylegs, the Red Fox, and Grandfather Mole

    13:35

  8. One Good Turn Deserves Another

    21:29

  9. The White Bird

    26:04

  10. How The Good Gifts were Used by Two

    16:21

  11. How Boots Befooled the King

    16:39

  12. The Step-mother

    20:25

  13. Master Jacob

    18:30

  14. Peterkin and the Little Grey Hare

    22:28

  15. Mother Hildegarde

    16:37

  16. Which is Best

    16:49

  17. The Simpleton and his Little Black Hen

    15:37

  18. The Swan Maiden

    17:27

  19. The Three Little Pigs and the Ogre

    14:28

  20. The Staff and the Fiddle

    19:13

  21. How the Princess's Pride was Broken

    15:46

  22. How Two Went into Partnership

    14:36

  23. King Stork

    18:45

  24. The Best that Life has to Give

    19:05

The Wonder Clock (1887) is a public domain work.

The audio edition streams in the page. There is no audio file to download.

Browse all free audiobooks

About this book

Howard Pyle set himself an unusual task here: twenty-four original fairy tales, one for every hour on the clock face, written in the plain cadence of old folk stories rather than borrowed from any single tradition. Kings, millers' sons, talking animals, and cunning young heroes fill its pages, each tale opened by a short verse from his sister Katharine. Pyle also drew the many woodcut-style illustrations himself, so the book is as much a pleasure for the eye as for the ear when read aloud. Written to sound as though handed down for generations, it stands among the finest American additions to the fairy tale form.

From the opening pages

There was a king travelling through the country, and he and those with him were so far away from home that darkness caught them by the heels, and they had to stop at a stone mill for the night, because there was no other place handy.

While they sat at supper, they heard a sound in the next room, and it was a baby crying.

The miller stood in the corner, back of the stove, with his hat in his hand. “What is that noise?” said the king to him.

“Oh! it is nothing but another baby that the good storks have brought into the house to-day,” said the miller.

Now there was a wise man travelling along with the king, who could read the stars and everything that they told as easily as one can read one’s A B C’s in a book after one knows them, and the king, for a bit of a jest, would have him find out what the stars had to foretell of the miller’s baby. So the wise man went out and took a peep up in the sky, and by and by he came in again.

“Well,” said the king, “and what did the stars tell you?”

“The stars tell me,” said the wise man, “that you shall have a daughter, and that the miller’s baby, in the room yonder, shall marry her when they are old enough to think of such things.”

“What!” said the king, “and is a miller’s baby to marry the princess that is to come! We will see about that.” So the next day he took the miller aside and talked and bargained, and bargained and talked, until the upshot of the matter was that the miller was paid two hundred dollars, and the king rode off with the baby.

Contents

About the author

Howard Pyle - BDeBooks
Howard Pyle

Howard Pyle was an American illustrator, painter, and author, primarily of books for young people. He was a native of Wilmington, Delaware, and he spent the last year of his life in Florence, Italy.

More by Howard Pyle

See all 13 books

More from this genre

See all

Discussion

No comments yet. Share a thought, a question or a favourite passage.

Copyright concern? Read our DMCA policy

Read or download

Public domain book This work is in the public domain and free of copyright. Anyone may read, download and share it.

No download needed. Text reader: adjustable size, font and theme.
  • EPUB 27 MB Best for iPhone, Android, Kobo and tablets
  • KINDLE Send to Kindle Kindle devices and the Kindle app. Uses the same EPUB file. Send
    1. Download the EPUB file to this device.
    2. Open Amazon's Send to Kindle page, sign in, and add the file. Open Send to Kindle (opens in a new tab)

    On a phone: open the downloaded EPUB and share it to the Kindle app.

    You can also email the file to your Kindle address (it ends in @kindle.com) from an email address you approved in your Amazon account.

  • PDF 29 MB Best for computers, laptops and printing

Downloads start right away. How to open EPUB on your phone

Book facts

First published
1888
Reading time
About 5 hours
Pages
279
Language
English
Formats
PDF, EPUB, Read online, Audiobook
Audio read by
Maria Kasper, Kara Shallenberg (1969-2023), Michelle Crandall and others