Now your child can enjoy Walden by Henry David Thoreau as a Michael Clay Thompson language-illustrated classic. The book is reproduced in its entirety and includes Michael's "language illustrations"—close-ups of poetic techniques, four-level analyses of interesting grammar, and comments about writing strategies. Challenging vocabulary is defined at the bottom of each page.

Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862) is best known for his ideas about individual liberty. He was an abolitionist, attacking the Fugitive Slave Law, and he wrote a famous essay, "On Civil Disobedience," advocating resistance to unjust laws. He influenced Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr. He also spent a night in jail in opposition to the Mexican-American War.

His most famous work is Walden, a uniquely American mixture of dissidence, transcendental philosophy, natural science, self-reliance, and iconoclasm. The book is filled with memorable lines and thought-provoking challenges to conventional assumptions, all against a background of living in the woods by Walden Pond in Massachusetts.

Michael encourages us to read Walden at "thought speed" (rather than "talk speed"), which is much slower and deeper, pausing for the processing of profound ideas and special language, looking up strange words, place names, and other references that Thoreau sprinkled liberally throughout the book. It is a masterpiece worth the time.