I love great children’s books. If you’ve been around the blog for any amount of time, you’ll know that I often share great kids’ books as well as resources for literature unit studies. And I’m often sharing links to places where you can purchase these great books. But even if you can’t afford to buy all these great books and build up your library, you can have access to great literature for kids.
Libraries can be good resources, but some are better than others at providing quality literature instead of just kids’ novels based on television and movie characters.While I love building our home library (which is always threatening to take over our house!), there are places online to find excellent children’s literature that is free in the public domain.


The list I’ve collected here contains mostly books that come from Project Gutenberg. It’s a great resource for finding quality books for free. But it can be a little difficult to navigate, so I’ve collected some of my favorites here. Some of these books can be downloaded to a reading device or read online and some are great audio books that can be listened to for free. In this post I’m sharing a collection of children’s classic literature that you can read for free.
This little library can get you started on the road to happy reading aloud of good books without requiring any of your budgeted schooling funds.
Children’s Literature/Classics
Little Women by Louisa May Alcott
Dorothy and the Wizard of Oz by L. Frank Baum (They have most of the whole Oz series.)
A Little Princess by Francis Hodgson Burnett
The Secret Garden by Francis Hodgson Burnett
Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll
A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens
The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame
The Jungle Book by Rudyard Kipling
The Story of Doctor Dolittle by Hugh Lofting
Anne of Green Gables by L.M. Montgomery (And some of the other Anne books)
Black Beauty by Anna Sewell(Also the young readers edition)
Five Little Peppers and How They Grew by Margaret Sidney
In the Court of King Arthur by Samuel E. Lowe
The Gift of the Magi by O. Henry
Classic Storybooks
The Velveteen Rabbit by Margery Williams Bianco
The Blue Fairy Book by Andrew Lang (They have all the other fairy books as well.)
The Song of Hiawatha by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Beautiful Stories From Shakespeare by E. Nesbitt
A Child’s Garden of Verses by Robert Lewis Stevenson
American Fairy Tales by L. Frank Baum
The Wonder Book of Bible Stories by Logan Marshall
Peter Rabbit by Thornton W. Burgess
Classic Biography and History for Children
Ten Boys From History by Kate Dickinson Sweetser
The Story of Young Abraham Lincoln by Wayne Whipple
A Child’s History of England by Charles Dickens
Strange Stories From History for Young People by George Cary Eggleston
The Beginner’s American History by D.H. Montgomery
This Country of Ours by H.E. Marshall
The Loss of the S.S. Titanic: Its Story and Its Lessons by Lawrence Beesley
Audio Books
A Little Princess by Francis Hodgson Burnett
The Secret Garden by Francis Hodgson Burnett
Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll
Anne of Green Gables by L.M. Montgomery
Heidi by Johanna Spyri
Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
At Agincourt- White Hoods of Paris by G.A. Henty
Beautiful Stories of Shakespeare by E. Nesbitt
The Burgess Animal Book for Children by Thornton W. Burgess

Find Other Classics in the Public Domain
Project Gutenberg Children’s Shelf
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