Michael Clay Thompson: Literature Program - Series by Royal Fireworks Press

Alice's Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll is the first of Michael Clay Thompson's language-illustrated classics.

You can read the well-known story with its zany and memorable characters, surreal adventures and funny rhymes, and from time to time note, in special inserts, the author's particular use of language, grammar, or poetic techniques. These are the uses of language that we have learned in the MCT Language Arts Curriculum and now are shown in use in great works of literature.

Footnotes explain vocabulary that may be unfamiliar.

The second classic novel of the first trilogy chosen by Michael Clay Thompson as part of his Literature program.

Read the entrancing story by J.M.Barrie about Peter Pan and Wendy, Tinkerbell and the Lost Boys, Captain Hook and the ticking crocodile. Without distracting from the story, the author's use of language, grammar, and poetic techniques are highlighted from time to time by Michael Clay Thompson.

Footnotes explain vocabulary that may be unfamiliar.

Original illustrations

The Wind in the Willows is the third book of the first trilogy in Michael Clay Thompson's Literature program.

Presented by Michael Clay Thompson as one of the world's great novels, this beautiful children's classic explores the life of the riverbank seen through the eyes of Mole, Ratty, Badger and others, introduces us to the exuberant Mr Toad with his delight in the new motor-car, and explores the terrors of the Wild Wood. In his illustrations he shows how the author uses grammatical and poetic devices to enhance his story and give emotional impact to his sentences.

The idea is never to distract from the story, but to help understand how great writing works.

Footnotes define words that may be unfamiliar

In his introduction to this classic, thought-provoking, 19th century novel, Michael Clay Thompson writes:

"H.G. Wells’s The Time Machine is a supreme work of the imagination, a work so captivating in its vivid description of the distant future that the reader scarcely notices the radical art of the work, such as the almost total absence of dialogue and the fact that the main character is never named. The astounding final chapters are visionary to a degree almost unique in literature; one strains to think of comparisons other than Dante’s Inferno or Milton’s Paradise Lost.

The novel has it all: brilliant vocabulary, reflection on the implications of science, subtle and wry commentary on governmental and social systems, reflections on morality, a deep portrait of a creative genius whose mind isolates him even from his friends, luminous poetic writing, dazzling images...everything. It is a one-book humanities course."

In his introduction to Mark Twain's classic novel, Michael Clay Thompson writes:

"This is a novel with riches to spare, filled with Twain’s irrepressible relish for the English language, loaded with characters of all kinds, pervaded with irony. There are moments when the novel seems to be entirely humorous, and there are moments when the novel is horrifyingly prophetic, as in the final scenes that seem to be visions of the great world war to come, little more than a decade after the novel was published.

A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court is no novel for the faint of heart. Twain despised cruelty and violence, and he had to depict them to attack them, so this is a sometimes brutal story, powered by a vision of peace and humanity. It is a great read."

In his Introduction to the book, Michael Clay Thompson writes:

"Charles Dickens’s A Christmas Carol was first published in England a week before Christmas in 1843. The short novel helped to restore public interest in the holiday and its celebrations. Like Dickens’s other novels, A Christmas Carol ignites the reader’s sympathy for people who survive at society’s edges. It condemns mercenary and industrial indifference to human suffering and celebrates the goodness that is possible in all parts of society, although it does not overly idealize the downtrodden: Dickens includes disreputable and predatory characters from the poor ranks also.

Also like Dickens’s other novels, A Christmas Carol celebrates the ability of the individual to change for the better. Ebenezer Scrooge’s transition from odious miser to caring friend reminds us of the change we see in Dickens’s Sidney Carton in A Tale of Two Cities. We can hope that this theme is not naive or sentimental, modern sensibility notwithstanding"