Dot and the Kangaroo

Dot is miles from home when she looks up from her tears and finds a grey kangaroo crying beside her. Then the animal offers her a handful of berries—and the silent bush begins to speak.

First published in 1899, Ethel C. Pedley’s tale opens in the vast Australian bush, where prickly scrub has torn Dot’s dress and dusk is closing in. The five-year-old has chased a hare far from her family’s cottage and fears no one will find her before nightfall. Her new companion knows the ache of being lost, too: she has lost her joey. With the berries’ strange gift letting Dot understand the creatures around her, the kangaroo sets out to help—and offers some blunt opinions about humans along the way. Can this unusual guide lead Dot home through a bush full of voices and danger?

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.