Books like The green and burning tree by Eleanor Cameron

A lonely orphan girl on the Yorkshire moors befriends a disabled cousin and unlocks the secrets of a hidden garden.

A charming first look at early American pioneer life, following young Laura Ingalls and her family as they live in a simple Wisconsin cabin, learn chores, and grow together on the Big Woods frontier.

A solitary Chumash girl is left on San Nicolas Island and must learn to survive alone, mastering skills traditionally reserved for men while facing danger, hunger and loneliness.

"Guroian illuminates the complex ways in which fairy tales and fantasies educate the moral imagination from earliest childhood. Examining a wide range of stories - from Pinocchio and The Little Mermaid to Charlotte's Web, The Velveteen Rabbit, The Wind in the Willows, and the Narnia Chronicles - he argues that these tales capture the meaning of morality through vivid depictions of the struggle between good and evil, in which characters must make difficult choices between right and wrong, or heroes and villains contest the very fate of imaginary worlds. Character and the virtues are depicted compellingly in these stories; the virtues glimmer as if in a looking glass, and wickedness and deception are unmasked of their pretensions to goodness and truth. We are made to face the unvarnished truth about ourselves, and what kind of people we want to be." "Throughout, Guroian highlights the classical moral virtues such as courage, goodness, and honesty, especially as they are understood in traditional Christianity."--BOOK JACKET.