A level 4 Oxford Bookworms Library graded readers. Retold for Learners of English by David Penn.
One winter’s day in 1673 young John Ridd is riding home from school, across the wild lonely hills of Exmoor. He has to pass Doone valley – a dangerous place, as the Doones are famous robbers and murderers. All Exmoor lives in fear of the Doones.
At home there is sad news waiting for young John, and he learns that he has good reason to hate the Do ...
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 m ...
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 ...
A level 1 Oxford Bookworms Library graded reader. Retold for Learners of English by Jennifer Bassett.
France, 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 Miserables by Victor Hugo, one of France's greatest writers. T ...
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 'l ...
A level 1 Oxford Bookworms Library graded readers. Written for Learners of English by Rowena Akinyemi.
Cathy Wilson is driving to Norfolk, to begin her new job with the Harvey family. She is going to look after the two young children, Tim and Susan. Cathy meets the children’s father, and their grandmother, and their aunt. She meets Nick, the farmer who lives across the fields. But she doesn’t meet Miranda, the children’s mother, because Mirand ...
A level 2 Oxford Bookworms Library graded reader. Retold for Learners of English by John Escott.
There has been a ghost in the house for three hundred years, and Lord Canterville's family have had enough of it. So Lord Canterville sells his grand old house to an American family. Mr Hiram B. Otis is happy to buy the house and the ghost – because of course Americans don't believe in ghosts.
The Canterville ghost has great plans to frighten the ...
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 fam ...
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 film.
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