Harold Bloom states in this necessary anthology that to get to Shakespeare and Chekhov we will be better prepared if we have read Lewis Carroll and Edwar Lear, for example. In front of the Internet, television and video games, which threaten to alienate young people from reading, Bloom presents a book that entertains, challenges and entices readers. The selection is very broad and reflects the passion and erudition of one who, demoralized by the current state of juvenile literature, investigates the imaginative works of the nineteenth century, and even earlier, and chooses poems and stories that expand the mind and offer The magical company of good literature.