On the Tree Top

A miller boasts that his daughter can spin straw into gold—and the king decides to test the claim with a spinning wheel, a roomful of straw, and a death sentence.

Clara Doty Bates opens this collection of fairy tales and playful verses with a young miller’s daughter shut in the king’s castle, facing an impossible task by sunrise. A crooked little stranger offers to help, but his price grows with each heap of straw—and the girl has little left to give. From this eerie bargain, the book turns to comic fish and fairy mischief, with the nimble rhymes inviting young readers along. What will the stranger ask for when the next room is filled with straw?

With centuries of literature, it's inevitable that some will fall through the cracks. We hunt down public domain works and restore them so they're not lost to the world.

Who are we? We're Cairn Press. Our background is in design, publishing, typography, and technology. These skills fuel our mission to create the highest quality Public Domain eBooks available online, at an affordable price. We give them the treatment they deserve; our proprietary process restores books for a better overall user experience in design, readability, and e-reader compatibility.