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Classic stories, free to read.
61 stories in the U.S. public domain, grouped by grade band. Each one opens in the Focus-In reader, which reads aloud, follows the line with a ruler, explains hard words, and asks questions at the end.
34 titles marked Illuminated have pictures and character colors. All story texts are printed as first published.
Rikki-tikki-tavi · Illuminated
Character colors- Read-aloudEach paragraph can be read aloud as the student follows.
- Reading rulerThe current lines stay in focus and the rest of the page fades.
- Glossary in the textDotted words show a short meaning on hover or tap.
- Questions at the endSix questions on each story, checked as the student answers.
Sensitive subjects: teacher approval needed
This genre holds important books and stories that deal with subjects such as slavery, racism and violence. Each one opens with an academic foreword that explains its sensitive subjects.
These titles are part of Trailpost Plus. A teacher needs to assign them to students in the teacher portal, either one title at a time or the whole genre at once. They stay off when a teacher opens everything else.
Sensitive subjects
Elementary
Grades 1–5 · 13 titles
Aesop's Fables
Aesop, c. 600 BCE
Fifteen short fables, each ending with a lesson.
Grades 1–4Short story10 minutes
The Tale of Peter Rabbit
Beatrix Potter, 1902
Peter Rabbit goes into Mr. McGregor's garden after his mother tells him not to.
Grades 1–3Short story5 minutes
The Elephant's Child
Rudyard Kipling, 1902
A very curious young elephant goes to the Limpopo River to learn what the Crocodile has for dinner.
Grades 2–4Short story15 minutes
Hansel and Gretel
Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm, 1812
Two children left in the forest find a house made of bread and cake, and the witch who lives in it.
Grades 2–4Short story15 minutes
Jack and the Beanstalk
Joseph Jacobs, 1890
Jack trades the family cow for beans and climbs to an ogre's house in the sky.
Grades 2–4Short story15 minutes
The Velveteen Rabbit
Margery Williams, 1922
A stuffed rabbit learns from an old toy horse what it means to become Real.
Grades 2–4Short story20 minutes
IlluminatedThe Emperor's New Clothes
Hans Christian Andersen, 1837
Two swindlers promise an emperor a suit made of cloth that foolish people cannot see.
Grades 3–5Short story10 minutes
IlluminatedThe Happy Prince
Oscar Wilde, 1888
A golden statue of a prince asks a swallow to carry his jewels and gold leaf to the poor people of the city.
Grades 3–5Short story20 minutes
The Selfish Giant
Oscar Wilde, 1888
A giant walls children out of his garden, and spring refuses to come back.
Grades 3–5Short story10 minutes
The Steadfast Tin Soldier
Hans Christian Andersen, 1838
A one-legged tin soldier stays brave through a long, strange journey to return to the paper dancer he loves.
Grades 3–5Short story10 minutes
The Ugly Duckling
Hans Christian Andersen, 1843
A young bird who is mocked for looking different lives through a hard winter and finds out what he really is.
Grades 3–5Short story20 minutes
IlluminatedThe Wonderful Wizard of Oz
L. Frank Baum, 1900
Dorothy is carried by a cyclone to the Land of Oz and sets out to find the Wizard.
Grades 3–6Novel3.5 hours
The Golden Touch
Nathaniel Hawthorne, 1852
King Midas is granted his wish that everything he touches will turn to gold.
Grades 4–6Short story35 minutes
Middle school
Grades 6–8 · 23 titles
- Illuminated
Rikki-Tikki-Tavi
Rudyard Kipling, 1894
A young mongoose adopted by an English family in India defends their garden and house from two cobras.
Grades 5–7Short story35 minutes
IlluminatedThe White Seal
Rudyard Kipling, 1894
A white fur seal swims the oceans to find a beach where hunters cannot reach his people.
Grades 5–7Short story40 minutes
The Adventure of the Speckled Band
Arthur Conan Doyle, 1892
Sherlock Holmes investigates a woman's strange death and the dying words "the speckled band."
Grades 6–9Short story55 minutes
After Twenty Years
O. Henry, 1906
Two friends promised to meet in the same New York doorway twenty years later.
Grades 6–8Short story5 minutes
The Canterville Ghost
Oscar Wilde, 1887
An American family moves into a haunted English house and refuses to be frightened by its ghost.
Grades 6–8Short story1 hour
IlluminatedThe Gift of the Magi
O. Henry, 1905
A young married couple with very little money each look for a Christmas present for the other.
Grades 6–9Short story10 minutes
The Last Leaf
O. Henry, 1907
A young artist with pneumonia believes she will die when the last ivy leaf falls.
Grades 6–8Short story15 minutes
The Lumber-Room
Saki, 1914
A boy left behind as a punishment finds a better way to spend the day than the trip he missed.
Grades 6–8Short story10 minutes
Mowgli's Brothers
Rudyard Kipling, 1894
A human baby is taken in by a family of wolves, and the tiger who hunted him wants him back.
Grades 6–8Short story40 minutes
IlluminatedThe Open Window
Saki (H. H. Munro), 1911
A nervous visitor in the country hears a strange story from his hostess's niece about an open window.
Grades 6–8Short story5 minutes
IlluminatedThe Ransom of Red Chief
O. Henry, 1910
Two kidnappers take a banker's young son and find that the boy is far more trouble than they expected.
Grades 6–8Short story25 minutes
The Red-Headed League
Arthur Conan Doyle, 1891
A pawnbroker is paid to copy an encyclopedia because of his red hair, and Sherlock Holmes wants to know why.
Grades 6–9Short story50 minutes
IlluminatedRip Van Winkle
Washington Irving, 1819
A farmer in the Catskill Mountains falls asleep after drinking with strange men and wakes up twenty years later.
Grades 6–8Short story35 minutes
A White Heron
Sarah Orne Jewett, 1886
A girl in the Maine woods has to decide whether to show a hunter where a rare bird nests.
Grades 6–9Short story25 minutes
The £1,000,000 Bank-Note
Mark Twain, 1893
A penniless American in London is handed a million-pound note as part of a bet between two rich brothers.
Grades 7–9Short story45 minutes
IlluminatedThe Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County
Mark Twain, 1865
A talkative old man in a mining camp tells a long story about Jim Smiley, who would bet on anything.
Grades 7–9Short story15 minutes
IlluminatedThe Lady, or the Tiger?
Frank R. Stockton, 1882
A king's daughter must decide which of two doors her lover will open in the arena: one hides a lady, the other a tiger.
Grades 7–9Short story15 minutes
IlluminatedThe Legend of Sleepy Hollow
Washington Irving, 1820
Ichabod Crane, a schoolmaster in a quiet New York valley, hopes to marry Katrina Van Tassel and hears tales of a headless horseman.
Grades 7–9Short story1 hour
The Man Without a Country
Edward Everett Hale, 1863
A young army officer who curses his country in court is sentenced never to hear its name again.
Grades 7–9Short story1 hour
IlluminatedThe Necklace
Guy de Maupassant, 1884
Mathilde borrows a diamond necklace from a rich friend to wear to a ball, and then she loses it.
Grades 7–10Short story15 minutes
IlluminatedA Scandal in Bohemia
Arthur Conan Doyle, 1891
Sherlock Holmes is hired by a king to recover a photograph from the singer Irene Adler.
Grades 7–9Short story50 minutes
IlluminatedThe Most Dangerous Game
Richard Connell, 1924
A big-game hunter falls off a yacht and swims to an island owned by a general who hunts for sport.
Grades 8–10Short story45 minutes
IlluminatedThe Tell-Tale Heart
Edgar Allan Poe, 1843
A narrator who insists he is not mad describes how he planned and carried out the murder of an old man.
Grades 8–10Short story10 minutes
High school
Grades 9–12 · 25 titles
IlluminatedThe Monkey's Paw
W. W. Jacobs, 1902
The White family is given a dried monkey's paw that is said to grant three wishes.
Grades 8–10Short story20 minutes
IlluminatedThe Bet
Anton Chekhov, 1889
A banker and a young lawyer make a bet about whether a man can live alone in a locked room for fifteen years.
Grades 9–12Short story15 minutes
IlluminatedThe Cask of Amontillado
Edgar Allan Poe, 1846
During carnival, Montresor leads Fortunato down into his family's catacombs to taste a rare wine.
Grades 9–12Short story15 minutes
IlluminatedThe Country of the Blind
H. G. Wells, 1904
A mountain climber falls into a hidden valley where everyone has been blind for fifteen generations.
Grades 9–12Short story1 hour
IlluminatedThe Curious Case of Benjamin Button
F. Scott Fitzgerald, 1922
Benjamin Button is born an old man in 1860 and grows younger as the years pass.
Grades 9–12Short story50 minutes
The Fall of the House of Usher
Edgar Allan Poe, 1839
A man visits his sick childhood friend in a decaying mansion, where something is wrong with the friend's sister.
Grades 9–12Short story40 minutes
IlluminatedThe Invisible Man
G. K. Chesterton, 1911
Father Brown and his friend Flambeau investigate threats against an inventor in a London flat that no one was seen to enter.
Grades 9–12Short story35 minutes
IlluminatedA Jury of Her Peers
Susan Glaspell, 1917
Two women wait in a farmhouse kitchen while the men search the house after a farmer is found dead.
Grades 9–12Short story45 minutes
IlluminatedThe Masque of the Red Death
Edgar Allan Poe, 1842
A prince and his guests shut themselves inside an abbey to escape a plague and hold a masked ball.
Grades 9–12Short story15 minutes
The Minister's Black Veil
Nathaniel Hawthorne, 1836
A Puritan minister puts on a black veil one Sunday and never takes it off.
Grades 9–12Short story30 minutes
IlluminatedAn Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge
Ambrose Bierce, 1890
A Southern planter stands on a railroad bridge in Alabama, about to be hanged by Union soldiers during the Civil War.
Grades 9–12Short story20 minutes
The Revolt of "Mother"
Mary E. Wilkins Freeman, 1890
A farm wife who has waited forty years for a new house moves her family into her husband's new barn.
Grades 9–12Short story35 minutes
The Signal-Man
Charles Dickens, 1866
A lonely railway signal-man is haunted by a figure that appears before each disaster on his line.
Grades 9–12Short story30 minutes
IlluminatedThe Story of an Hour
Kate Chopin, 1894
A woman with a weak heart is told that her husband has been killed in a railroad accident.
Grades 9–12Short story5 minutes
IlluminatedTo Build a Fire
Jack London, 1908
A man travels alone with his dog across the Yukon at seventy-five degrees below zero.
Grades 9–12Short story40 minutes
Araby
James Joyce, 1914
A boy in Dublin promises to bring a gift from a bazaar to the girl he admires.
Grades 10–12Short story15 minutes
The Garden Party
Katherine Mansfield, 1922
On the day of her family's party, a young woman learns that a working man has been killed near their house.
Grades 10–12Short story30 minutes
IlluminatedThe Open Boat
Stephen Crane, 1897
Four men from a sunken ship try to reach the Florida shore in a small lifeboat.
Grades 10–12Short story50 minutes
IlluminatedThe Overcoat
Nikolai Gogol, 1842
A poor government clerk in St. Petersburg saves for months to buy a new overcoat.
Grades 10–12Short story1 hour
IlluminatedThe Queen of Spades
Alexander Pushkin, 1834
A young officer in St. Petersburg tries to learn an old countess's secret for winning at cards.
Grades 10–12Short story55 minutes
The Wife of His Youth
Charles W. Chesnutt, 1898
A respected man plans to propose at a ball until a woman from his past arrives at his door.
Grades 10–12Short story25 minutes
IlluminatedYoung Goodman Brown
Nathaniel Hawthorne, 1835
A young Puritan in Salem leaves his wife, Faith, for one night to meet a stranger in the forest.
Grades 10–12Short story30 minutes
IlluminatedBartleby, the Scrivener
Herman Melville, 1853
A Wall Street lawyer hires a quiet copyist who begins to answer every request with "I would prefer not to."
Grades 11–12Short story1.5 hours
IlluminatedThe Dream of a Ridiculous Man
Fyodor Dostoevsky, 1877
A lonely man in St. Petersburg decides to end his life and then has a dream of another world.
Grades 11–12Short story50 minutes
IlluminatedThe Yellow Wallpaper
Charlotte Perkins Gilman, 1892
A woman ordered to rest by her doctor husband records her thoughts about the wallpaper in the room where she is kept.
Grades 11–12Short story35 minutes
Illuminated Pictures and character colors.
Trailpost Plus
More with Trailpost Plus
Plus has more than 20 full-year courses, the Edumon game, and 14 more titles that a teacher switches on for each student.