Gulliver's Travels

Jonathan Swift's classic travel adventure has been adapted into an easy-reading Stepping Stones early chapter book, while keeping all the fun, humor, and unusual perspectives of the original story. Gulliver has an itch to travel around the world, but whenever he steps on a ship, bad luck seems to find him. He is shipwrecked, abandoned, marooned, and mutinied against, and each time lands in a strange and curious place. First he discovers the kingdom of the six-inch-tall Lilliputians, then the country of the giant Brobdingnagians, then the island of the academic Laputans, which floats in the sky, and finally the noble realm of the horselike Houyhnhnms. Who knew there were so many unusual creatures under the sun?

Jonathan Swift was born in Dublin, Ireland, in 1667, where he lived for much of his life. He was well known for writing satires and political pamphlets. In 1726, Swift published Gulliver's Travels anonymously and it was an immediate hit, reprinting three times that year. Although Gulliver's Travels was written as a satire of human pride, not as a children's book, it has long been considered a classic for young readers. Jonathan Swift died on October 19, 1745.