Readers -- 1870-1950. ''Youth's Companion Series'' Used in the U.S.A. school curriculum: Geography.

The volumes of the ''Youth's Companion Series'' entitled ''The Wide World,'' ''Northern Europe,'' ''Under Sunny Skies,'' ''Toward the Rising Sun,'' and ''Strange Lands Near Home'' provide in interesting and attractive form [,] a supply of reading material for either home or school that is especially suitable for supplementing the formal teaching of geography.

''The Wide World,'' with which the series properly begins, presents vivid scenes from many countries. Each of the succeeding volumes enters into somewhat greater detail on a limited area, which is indicated by the title. The sketches have been prepared by authors whose work needs no introduction.

The sketches included in ''Strange Lands near Home'' are on Mexico, the West Indies, and various points of interest in South America.
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Excerpt from page 1 of ''Strange Lands Near Home,'' of the October 12, 2017 Classic Reprint Hardcover:

''The Bahama Sea is perhaps the most beautiful of all waters. Columbus beheld it and its islands with a poet's eye.''

''It only needed the singing of the nightingale, said the joyful mariner, to make it like Andalusia in April and to his mind Andalusia was the loveliest place on earth. In sailing among these gardens of the sea in the serene and trans parent autumn days after the great discovery, the soul of Columbus was at times overwhelmed and entranced by a sense of the beauty of everything in it and about it. Life seemed, as it were, a spiritual vision.''