FREE Public Domain Books I Love: Among the People series by Clara Dillingham Pierson
- Hannah Ward
- Apr 17
- 3 min read
I absolutely adore this series of vintage nature books written by Clara Dillingham Pierson over 100 years ago.
Clara was homeschooled as a child, later trained as a kindergarten teacher in Chicago, and went on to teach at Alma College in Michigan, where she became superintendent of the Training Department. She was a dedicated naturalist, a mother of three, and a wonderful storyteller, and you can feel her real-life experience with children and nature in every page. She's our kind of girl!
Clara wrote beautiful nature stories that teach science in a living, memorable way. Instead of dry facts about animals and their environments, the tales bring creatures to life through gentle adventures and observations. Kids absorb so much more this way and actually remember what they just heard long after the reading - plus, they beg for more read aloud time!
I especially love the writing style and the length of the stories. They’re the perfect size for short read-aloud sessions or for beginning readers to tackle on their own. You can tell that Clara knew what she was doing when she wrote these. They're the so thoughtfully put together. If you’ve followed my learning design work, you’ve probably seen these stories sprinkled throughout American Pioneer Curriculum Level 1 English.
Because these books were written so long ago, they are now in the public domain. That means they’re completely free in digital format!
How I Use Them in Our Home
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You know how passionate I am about building a rich physical home library. But with these public domain treasures, I make an exception and use my Kindle (especially since I haven't found a reprint of the full series with the beautiful illustrations persevered that I love yet - boo!)
With my vision issues, it’s been a game-changer to download the vintage text, adjust the font size, and read comfortably without the eye strain of a computer screen. It took me a while to warm up to the idea of an e-reader, but now I’m hooked!
Luckily, all of the Among the People series are easily sourced on Project Gutenberg for free, and you can download the Kindle files directly from that site. Here’s the full list:
Another way we enjoy these books is through audiobook formats. If you’ve never heard of LibriVox, you’re missing out! It’s a volunteer-run site full of free audiobooks for public domain titles, including the entire Among the People series!
I’m a giant fan of our Yoto Minis (I actually have one for each of my children) and we love making our own Yoto cards. LibriVox is the perfect way to fill those cards with beautiful classic stories for free. The narrations feature rich vocabulary, build essential background knowledge, and feel cozy and wholesome.
Here’s the full list of LibriVox recordings for the series:
These gentle, living science stories have become a favorite in our home for cozy read-aloud time, early reading practice, and independent listening. I hope you love them as much as we do.
Happy reading,
Hannah
Have you seen the editions by Living Book Press? Looking at the sample and comparing to the Project Gutenberg version, it looks like they've restored the original illustrations where they could and also added photographs of the animals from the stories. (I also think everyone should know that every month they have make two of their eBooks completely free!)