Can you match these first lines to their book titles?

Oscar’s Gift Reading Guide: Day 26

Books Published in the Early 1900s

“The lid came off with a loud creak and a small cloud of dust and packing straw. Inside were books. More books than I had ever seen in one place. More books than I had seen even in a school.” ~ Oscar’s Gift

What kinds of books were published in the first years of the 20th century? See if you can match these first lines from books published from 1900 through 1905 with the correct title and author (then click on the book jackets to learn the answers and to read the works online):

Titles

  • The Call of the Wild
  • Five Children and It
  • The Little Princess
  • The Tale of Peter Rabbit
  • The Wonderful World of Oz

Authors

  • Beatrix Potter
  • Edith Nesbit
  • Frances Hodgson Burnett
  • Jack London
  • L. Frank Baum

First Lines

A. Once on a dark winter’s day, when the yellow fog hung so thick and heavy in the streets of London that the lamps were lighted and the shop windows blazed with gas as they do at night, an odd-looking little girl sat in a cab with her father and was driven rather slowly through the big thoroughfares. She sat with her feet tucked under her, and leaned against her father, who held her in his arm, as she stared out of the window at the passing people with a queer old-fashioned thoughtfulness in her big eyes. She was such a little girl that one did not expect to see such a look on her small face. It would have been an old look for a child of twelve, and Sara Crewe was only seven.

B. Buck did not read the newspapers, or he would have known that trouble was brewing, not alone for himself, but for every tidewater dog, strong of muscle and with warm, long hair, from Puget Sound to San Diego. Because men, groping in the Arctic darkness, had found a yellow metal, and because steamship and transportation companies were booming the find, thousands of men were rushing into the Northland. These men wanted dogs, and the dogs they wanted were heavy dogs, with strong muscles by which to toil, and furry coats to protect them from the frost.

C. Once upon a time there were four little Rabbits, and their names were–Flopsy, Mopsy, Cotton-tail, and Peter. They lived with their Mother in a sand-bank, underneath the root of a very big fir-tree. ‘Now my dears,’ said old Mrs. Rabbit one morning, ‘you may go into the fields or down the lane, but don’t go into Mr. McGregor’s garden: your Father had an accident there; he was put in a pie by Mrs. McGregor.’

D. The house was three miles from the station, but before the dusty hired fly had rattled along for five minutes the children began to put their heads out of the carriage window and to say, ‘Aren’t we nearly there?’  And every time they passed a house, which was not very often, they all said, ‘Oh, is THIS it?’  But it never was, till they reached the very top of the hill, just past the chalk-quarry and before you come to the gravel-pit.  And then there was a white house with a green garden and an orchard beyond, and mother said, ‘Here we are!’

E. Dorothy lived in the midst of the great Kansas prairies, with Uncle Henry, who was a farmer, and Aunt Em, who was the farmer’s wife. Their house was small, for the lumber to build it had to be carried by wagon many miles. There were four walls, a floor and a roof, which made one room; and this room contained a rusty looking cookstove, a cupboard for the dishes, a table, three or four chairs, and the beds. Uncle Henry and Aunt Em had a big bed in one corner, and Dorothy a little bed in another corner. There was no garret at all, and no cellar–except a small hole dug in the ground, called a cyclone cellar, where the family could go in case one of those great whirlwinds arose, mighty enough to crush any building in its path. It was reached by a trap door in the middle of the floor, from which a ladder led down into the small, dark hole.

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JackLondoncallwild

FiveChildrenAndIt

 


Click HERE for the full Oscar’s Gift Reading Guide.

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