Charles Kingsley 4 hr 6 min read

Tom, a mistreated young chimney-sweep, drowns and is reborn as a tiny water-baby, beginning a strange underwater journey of moral adventure through rivers, seas, and wonders.

Charles Kingsley's 1863 novel is a beloved, eccentric classic of Victorian children's fantasy. Whimsical, moralizing, richly imaginative. Read it for a one-of-a-kind fairy tale, part nature-fable, part satire, part spiritual allegory, following a sooty street-urchin's watery redemption, in a strange and enduring landmark of children's literature.

In its time

Published in 1863, during the 1860s, verne launches the voyages extraordinaires.

Reading it

4 hr 6 min read (a novel-length work, settle in).