The Ultimate Classic Collection for Children - Abridged

Hans Christian Andersen (1805-1875) was a Danish writer and author of many notable books including The Snow Queen. He specialized in writing fairytales that were inspired by tales he had heard as a child. As his writing evolved his fairytales became more bold and out of the box. Andersen's stories have been translated into more than 125 languages and have inspired many plays, films and ballets.

George Zarr is an award-winning writer, producer, director, and composer from Manhattan and currently based in Chicago. He is a co-writer, producer, and director of the comedy series Visit New Grimston, Anyway and the international award-winning Little Chills mystery series. He recently wrote and produced the documentary Lincoln in Letters and Music. George is also the writer, director, and composer of the Hans Christian Anderson musical The Bell, the suspense anthology Dark of the Moon Inn, and the four-part comedy Hurry! Hurry! It’s Almost Christmas, all three available from Blackstone Publishing.

Lucy Maud Montgomery (1874-1942) was a Canadian novelist and the famed author of the Anne Shirley series. She found instant literary fame upon the publication of her first book, Anne of Green Gables. She published 20 novels and 500 short stories during her lifetime and was the first woman to be named a fellow of the Royal Society of Arts.

Charles Lutwidge Dodgson (1832-1898), better known by his pen name Lewis Carroll, published Alice's Adventures in Wonderland in 1865 and its sequel, Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There, in 1871. Considered a master of the genre of literary nonsense, he is renowned for his ingenious wordplay and sense of logic, and his highly original vision.

Charles Perrault was born in Paris on January 1628. Son of an upper-class burgeois family, he attended the best schools and became a lawyer in 1651. He wrote Parallels Between the Ancients and the Moderns, which compared the authors of antiquity unfavorably to modern writers, and became a member of the Academie Francaise in 1671. His Stories or Tales from Times Past, with Morals: Tales of Mother Goose, published in 1697, gave him great popularity and opened up a new literary genre: fairy tales. Among his most famous versions of fairy tales are "Blue Beard," "Sleeping Beauty on the Woods," "Little Red Riding Hood," "The Master Cat or Puss in Boots," "Cinderella," "Little Thumb," and "Donkey Skin." He died in Paris on May 1703.

Frances Hodgson Burnett (1849-1924) was born in Manchester. She had a very poor upbringing and used to escape from the horror of her surroundings by writing stories. In 1865 her family emigrated to the USA where she married and became the successful author of many children's books including The Secret Garden, A Little Princess and Little Lord Fauntleroy.

Lyman Frank Baum (1856 - 1919) was an American author, actor, and independent filmmaker best known as the creator, along with illustrator W. W. Denslow, of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, one of the most popular books in American children's literature. He wrote thirteen Oz sequels, nine other fantasy novels, and scores of other works; 55 novels, 82 short stories, over 200 poems, an unknown number of scripts, as well as many miscellaneous writings.

Jacob Ludwig Carl Grimm was a German philologist, jurist, and mythologist. He is known as the discoverer of Grimm’s law (linguistics), the co-author with his brother Wilhelm of the monumental Deutsches Wörterbuch, the author of Deutsche Mythologie and, more popularly, as one of the Brothers Grimm and the editor of Grimm’s Fairy Tales.

Charles Dickens (1812-70) is one of the most recognized celebrities of English literature. His many books include Oliver Twist, Great Expectations and A Christmas Carol.

Megan Follows is a Canadian actress and director whose career has spanned the stage, TV, and film. She was cast as Anne Shirley in the 1985 highly popular CBC-TV miniseries Anne of Green Gables (as well as its two sequels). Her performances earned her two Gemini Awards as best actress for the first two miniseries, Anne of Green Gables and Anne of Green Gables: The Sequel, and a Gemini nomination for the third Anne installment, Anne of Green Gables: The Continuing Story.

Barbara Rosenblat is a multi-award-winning voice actor for audiobooks. On Broadway, she created the role of 'Mrs. Medlock' in 'The Secret Garden'.

Georgia Lee Schultz is an ATC Seneca Award nominee for Best Leading Actress and has played the lead in Voices in the Wind Audio Theatre's productions of Alice In Wonderland, Snow White, and Cinderella.