Жанр: Изучение языков

A Starter level Oxford Bookworms Library graded reader. Written for Learners of English by Helen Brooke. You are in a small plane, going across the Rocky Mountains. Suddenly, the engine starts to make strange noises… Soon you are alone, in the snow, at the top of a mountain, and it is very, very cold. Can you find your way out of the…

A level 3 Oxford Bookworms Library graded reader. Retold for Learners of English by Clare West. Christmas is humbug, Scrooge says – just a time when you find yourself a year older and not a penny richer. The only thing that matters to Scrooge is business, and making money. But on Christmas Eve three spirits come to visit him. They take him travelling on the wings of the night to see the shadows of Christmas past, present, and future – and Scrooge learns a lesson that he will never…

A level 3 Oxford Bookworms Library graded reader. Retold for Learners of English by Jennifer Bassett. Down by the river bank, where the wind whispers through the willow trees, is a very pleasant place to have a lunch party with a few friends. But life is not always so peaceful for the Mole and the Water Rat. There is the time, for example, when Toad gets interested in motor-cars – goes mad about them in face… The story of the adventures of Mole, Rat, Badger, and Toad has been loved by young and old for over a hundred…

A level 3 Oxford Bookworms Library graded reader. Retold for Learners of English by Nick Bullard. When men find gold in the frozen north of Canada, they need dogs – big, strong dogs to pull the sledges on the long journeys to and from the gold mines. Buck is stolen from his home in the south and sold as a sledge-dog. He has to learn a new way of life – how to work in harness, how to stay alive in the ice and the snow… and how to fight. Because when dog falls down in a fight, he never gets up…

A level 1 Oxford Bookworms Library graded readers. Written for Learners of English by Tim Vicary. England and Scotland in the 1500s. Two famous queens – Mary, the Catholic Queen of Scots, and Elizabeth I, the Protestant Queen of England. It was an exciting and a dangerous time to be alive, and to be a queen. Mary was Queen of Scotland when she was one week old. At sixteen, she was also Queen of France. She was tall and beautiful, with red-gold hair. Many men loved her and died for her. But she also had many enemies – men who said: ‘The death of Mary is the life of…

A level 2 Oxford Bookworms Library graded readers. Written for Learners of English by Tim Vicary. Ellen Shore’s family is an ordinary American family, and Ellen is six years old when her brother Al is born. Her parents are very pleased to have a son, but Ellen is not pleased, because now baby Al comes first. And when they are adults, Al still comes first. He begins a rock band and makes records. Soon he is rich and famous – very rich, but he gives nothing to his sister Ellen. She has a difficult life, with three young kids and very little money. And she learns to hate her rich, famous,…

A level 1 Oxford Bookworms Library graded readers. Written for Learners of English by Rowena Akinyemi. It is Molly Clarkson’s fiftieth birthday. She is having a party. She is rich, but she is having a small party – only four people. Four people, however, who all need the same thing: they need her money. She will not give them the money, so they are waiting for her to die. And there are other people who are also waiting for her to die. But one person can’t wait. And so, on her fiftieth birthday, Molly Clarkson is going to…

A level 6 Oxford Bookworms Library graded reader. Retold for Learners of English by Clare West. ‘The moment I first met you, I noticed your pride, your sense of superiority, and your selfish disdain for the feelings of others. You are the last man in the world whom I could ever be persuaded to marry,’ said Elizabeth Bennett. And so Elizabeth rejects the proud Mr Darcy. Can nothing overcome her prejudice against him? And what of the other Bennet girls – their fortunes, and misfortunes, in the business of getting husbands? This famous novel by Jane Austen is full of wise and…

A level 1 Oxford Bookworms Library graded readers. Written for Learners of English by John Escott. Nick Lortz is sitting outside a café in Whistler, a village in the Canadian mountains, when a stranger comes and sits next to him. She’s young, pretty, and has a beautiful smile. Nick is happy to sit and talk with her. But why does she call Nick ‘Mr Hollywood’? Why does she give him a big kiss when she leaves? And who is the man at the next table – the man with short white hair? Nick learns the answers to these questions three long days later – in a police station on Vancouver…

A level 1 Oxford Bookworms Library graded readers. Written for Learners of English by Joyce Hannam. In a house in Oxford three people are having breakfast – Carol, her husband Jan, and his father Josef. They are talking about Prague, because Carol wants them all to go there for Christmas. Josef was born in Prague, but he left his home city when he was a young man. He is an old man now, and he would like to see Prague again before he dies. But he is afraid. He still remembers another Christmas in Prague, many long years ago – a Christmas that changed his life for…

A level 2 Oxford Bookworms Library graded readers. Retold for Learners of English by Jennifer Bassett. Tony Kytes is a favourite with the girls but he’s not terribly clever. If you meet an old girlfriend and she asks for a ride home in your wagon, do you say yes? And then if you meet the girl you are planning to marry, what do you do? Very soon, Tony is in a great muddle, and does not know how to escape from it. These stories are set in an English country village of the nineteenth century, but Hardy’s tales of mistakes and muddles and marriages belong in any place, at any…

A level 4 Oxford Bookworms Library graded reader. Written for Learners of English by John Escott. Scarlet is the colour of sin, and the letter ‘A’ stands for ‘Adultery’. In the 1600s, in Boston, Massachusetts, love was allowed only between a husband and a wife. A child born outside marriage was a child of sin. Hester Prynne must wear the scarlet letter on her dress for the rest of her life. How can she ever escape from this public shame? What will happen to her child, growing up in the shadow of the scarlet letter? The future holds no joy for Hester Prynne. And what will happen to her…

A level 5 Oxford Bookworms Library graded reader. Retold for Learners of English by Clare West. ‘Please, Mr Murdstone! Don’t beat me! I’ve tried to learn my lessons, really I have, sir!’ sobs David. Although he is only eight years old, Mr Murdstone does beat him, and David is so frightened that he bites his cruel stepfather’s hand. For that, he is kept locked in his room for five days and nights, and nobody is allowed to speak to him. As David grows up, he learns that life is full of trouble and misery and cruelty. But he also finds laughter and kindness, trust…

A level 5 Oxford Bookworms Library graded reader. Retold for Learners of English by Clare West. In a gloomy, neglected house Miss Havisham sits, as she has sat year after year, in a wedding dress and veil that were once white, and are now faded and yellow with age. Her face is like a death’s head; her dark eyes burn with bitterness and hate. By her side sits a proud and beautiful girl, and in front of her, trembling with fear in his thick country boots, stands young Pip. Miss Havisham stares at Pip coldly, and murmurs to the girl at her side: ‘Break his heart, Estella. Break his…

A level 1 Oxford Bookworms Library graded reader. Written for Learners of English by Tim Vicary. He is not beautiful. His mother does not want him, children run away from him. People laugh at him, and call him ‘The Elephant Man’. Then someone speaks to him – and listens to him! At the age of 27, Joseph Merrick finds a friend for the first time in his life. This is a true and tragic story. It is also a famous…

A level 3 Oxford Bookworms Library graded reader. Retold for Learners of English by Tim Vicary. On a September day in 1821, in the church of a Yorkshire village, a man and six children stood around a grave. They were burying a woman: the man’s wife, the children’s mother. The children were all very young, and within a few years the two oldest were dead, too. Close to the wild beauty of the Yorkshire moors, the father brought up his young family. Who had heard of the Brontës of Haworth then? Branwell died while he was still a young man, but the three sisters who were left had an…

A level 4 Oxford Bookworms Library graded reader. Retold for Learners of English by John Escott. When Christmas comes for the four March girls, there is no money for expensive presents and they give away their Christmas breakfast to a poor family. But there are no happier girls in America than Meg, Jo, Beth, and Amy. They miss their father, of course, who is away at the Civil War, but they try hard to be good so that he will be proud of his ‘little women’ when he comes home. This heart-warming story of family life has been popular for more than a hundred…

A level 2 Oxford Bookworms Library graded reader. Retold for Learners of English by Jennifer Bassett. William Shakespeare. Born April 1564, at Stratford-upon-Avon. Died April 1616. Married Anne Hathaway: two daughters, one son. Actor, poet, famous playwright. Wrote nearly forty plays. But what was he like as a man? What did he think about when he rode into London for the first time . . . or when he was writing his plays Hamlet and Romeo and Juliet . . . or when his only son died? We know the facts of his life, but we can only guess at his hopes, his fears, his…

A level 3 Oxford Bookworms Library graded readers. Retold for Learners of English by Nick Bullard. Every town should have a ‘card’ – someone who gets talked about, someone who does mad and wonderful things, someone who makes you laugh. Bursley in the Five Towns has a ‘card’: Edward Henry Machin (Denry for short). Denry begins life in a poor little house where the rent is twenty-three pence a week. But before he’s thirty, he’s made a lot of money, and had more adventures than you and I have had hot dinners. The town of Bursley never stops talking about him. Whatever will young…

A level 1 Oxford Bookworms Library graded readers. Written for Learners of English by Rosemary Border. Everybody wants to win the lottery. A million pounds, perhaps five million, even ten million. How wonderful! Emma Carter buys a ticket for the lottery every week, and puts the ticket carefully in her bag. She is seventy-three years old and does not have much money. She would like to visit her son in Australia, but aeroplane tickets are very expensive. Jason Williams buys lottery tickets every week too. But he is not a very nice young man. He steals things. He hits old ladies in the street,…