Back Home

The song insists the schoolhouse was little, old, red, and on a hill. The narrator knows it may have been yellow brick beside a flooded playground—but once the quartet strikes up, the facts don’t stand a chance.

In Eugene Wood’s affectionate portrait of rural America, a schoolhouse gathers children from muddy roads and winter drifts, while games, songs, and memories turn an ordinary day into something larger. The narrator’s memories are funny and tender, but his question is serious: can the shared promise of education overcome the prejudices that keep people apart? Listen for the schoolhouse’s deeper meaning—and the country it might help build.

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.