In this spirited collection, Kate Douglas Wiggin argues that children are not possessions to be managed or indulged, but human beings with rights to fairness, dignity, and a true childhood. With wit and vivid anecdote, she challenges the power adults wield over a child's body, mind, and soul, condemning fear, dishonesty, crushed will, and premature sophistication while praising play, simplicity, sunshine, animals, and the open air. She traces the rise of child-centered thought through reformers such as Rousseau, Pestalozzi, Froebel, Herbert Spencer, and the Grimms, and treats motherhood, even before birth, as a sacred moral force. Wiggin insists that wise parenting requires patience, example, discipline rooted in justice, and freedom gradually granted as children grow. She celebrates adults who meet children at their own level, and extends her vision into education, where stories, pictures, clay modeling, and kindergarten become joyful tools for awakening imagination and character. Play, she shows, is never trivial: it reveals society's habits, preserves older customs, and can be a foundation for reform. From nursery to university, she calls for the whole child—thought, feeling, and conduct—to be educated in a kinder, more humane world. This edition has been fully restored with modern typesetting, custom cover design.