Grace Darling
/ SEMAll they could hear was the wind, and the waves. All they could see was the night. They could not see the ship, broken in two, or the people holding on to the dark wet rock, slowly dying of cold. And they could not hear the cries for help – only the wind. How could a man and his daughter save the people on the rock? They only had a little wooden boat in that wild and dangerous sea. The Forfarshire was wrecked off the north-east coast of England in 1838. This is the true story of Grace Darling – a girl who became a famous heroine on that stormy night.
Cries from the Heart : Stories from Around the World
/ SEMFrom Botswana to New Zealand, from Jamaica to Nigeria, from Uganda to Malaysia, from India to South Africa, these moving stories show us that the human heart is the same in every place. Fear and pain, happiness and sadness, belong to us all. These eight stories were winning entries in the 2004 Commonwealth Short Story Competition. The writers are Sefi Atta, Adrienne M. Frater, Lauri Kubuitsile, Erica N. Robinson, Jackee Budesta Batanda, Janet Tay Hui Ching, Anuradha Muralidharan, and Tod Collins.
Red Dog
/ SEMClassics, modern fiction, non-fiction and more. Written for secondary and adult students the Oxford Bookworms Library has seven reading levels from A1-C1 of the CEFR. Red Dog was a Red Cloud kelpie, an Australian sheepdog. His life was full of excitement and adventure. He travelled all over Western Australia, and never really had an owner. But he had many, many friends, and he always knew where to go for a good meal. Louis de Bernières collected these stories about the life of a real dog in Western Australia. They are all true stories – some are funny, some are sad, but all are unforgettable. Everybody should have a friend like Red Dog.
Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland
/ SEMA story for children by Lewis Carroll (see Dodgson), published 1865.
Originally entitled Alice’s Adventures under Ground, and written for his young friend Alice Liddell, it tells how Alice dreams she pursues a White Rabbit down a rabbit‐hole to a world where she encounters such celebrated characters as the Duchess and the Cheshire Cat, the Mad Hatter and the March Hare, the King and Queen of Hearts, and the Mock Turtle. It contains the poems ‘You are old, Father William’, ‘Beautiful Soup’, and others, and Carroll’s typographical experiment ‘Fury and the Mouse’, in the shape of a mouse’s tail.
Five Children & It
/ SEMWhen the children dug a hole in the gravel-pit, they were very surprised at what they found. ‘It’ was a Psammead, a sand-fairy, thousands of years old. It was a strange little thing – fat and furry, and with eyes on long stalks. It was often very cross and unfriendly, but it could give wishes – one wish a day. ‘How wonderful!’ the children said. But wishes are difficult things. They can get you into trouble . . .
As the Inspector Said and Other Stories
/ SEMThe murder plan seems so neat, so clever. How can it possibly fail? And when Sonia’s stupid, boring little husband is dead, she will be free to marry her handsome lover. But perhaps the boring little husband is not so stupid after all… Murder plans that go wrong, a burglar who makes a bad mistake, a famous jewel thief who meets a very unusual detective… These five stories from the golden age of crime writing are full of mystery and surprises.
Kidnapped
/ SEMThis award-winning collection of adapted classic literature and original stories develops reading skills for low-beginning through advanced students.
Accessible language and carefully controlled vocabulary build students’ reading confidence.
Introductions at the beginning of each story, illustrations throughout, and glossaries help build comprehension.
Before, during, and after reading activities included in the back of each book strengthen student comprehension.
Audio versions of selected titles provide great models of intonation and pronunciation of difficult words.Through the Looking-Glass
/ SEMI wish I could get through into looking-glass house,’ Alice said. ‘Let’s pretend that the glass has gone soft and… Why, I do believe it has! It’s turning into a kind of cloud!’ A moment later Alice is inside the looking-glass world. There she finds herself part of a great game of chess, travelling through forests and jumping across brooks. The chess pieces talk and argue with her, give orders and repeat poems… It is the strangest dream that anyone ever had…
A Midsummer Night’s Dream
/ SEMThere are broken hearts and kisses and then weddings, so this is a story about love. There are actors who are funny because they cannot act, so it is also a story that makes people laugh. And there are fairies, spirits of the night, so it is a story about mischief and magic too. What happens when love and laughter come together with magic in an Athenian forest? A Midsummer Night’s Dream was written in about 1596 and is one of Shakespeare’s most popular plays. It has been retold for Bookworms, not as a play, but as a story.
The Prisoner of Zenda
/ SEMIdeal for intermediate learners of English looking to improve or practise their English. The book is filled with useful vocabulary that is carefully graded and easy to understand, it also comes with audio, so that you can listen to the story at the same time as reading. ‘We must leave for Zenda at once, to find the King!’ cried Sapt. ‘If we’re caught, we’ll all be killed!’So Rudolf Rassendyll and Sapt gallop through the night to find the King of Ruritania. But the King is now a prisoner in the Castle of Zenda. Who will rescue him from his enemies, the dangerous Duke Michael and Rupert of Hentzau?And who will win the heart of the beautiful Princess Flavia?
A Cup of Kindness : Stories from Scotland
/ SEMIn Edinburgh a detective listens to a confession; in Orkney an old man lives with the ghosts of his past. In the Outer Hebrides some travellers learn a lesson; in Glasgow a young woman steals a meeting with a famous actor; and in a small town somewhere a pigeon dies. These stories are as richly varied as the land of Scotland itself. Bookworms World Stories collect stories written in English from around the world. This volume has stories by Scottish writers Eona Macnicol, Malcolm Laing, Ian Rankin, George Mackay Brown, and Susie Maguire.
Les Misérables
/ SEMFrance, 1815. Jean Valjean leaves prison after nineteen years. These are dangerous and troubled times, and life is hard. Valjean must begin a new life, but how can he escape his past, and his enemy, Inspector Javert? This story for Bookworms is loosely based on the famous novel Les Misérables by Victor Hugo, one of France’s greatest writers. The novel was written in 1862, and the story has been retold many times – in a musical, in plays for radio and theatre, and in more than fifty films for television and cinema.