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 Denry do next?
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 extraordinary gift. They could write marvellous stories – Jane Eyre, Wuthering Heights, The Tenant of Wildfell Hall… But Charlotte, Emily, and Anne Brontë did not live to grow old or to enjoy their fame. Only their father was left, alone with his memories.
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 forget.…
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 again.
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 years.
A level 3 Oxford Bookworms Library graded reader. Retold for Learners of English by Jennifer Bassett. I 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 level 3 Oxford Bookworms Library graded readers. Retold for Learners of English by Clare West. On a stormy winter night, a stranger knocks at the door of a shepherd’s cottage. He is cold and hungry, and wants to get out of the rain. He is welcomed inside, but he does not give his name or his business. Who is he, and where has he come from? And he is only the first visitor to call at the cottage that night… In these three short stories, Thomas Hardy gives us pictures of the lives of shepherds and hangmen, dukes and teachers. But rich or poor, young or old, they all have the same feelings of fear, hope, love, jealousy…
A level 3 Oxford Bookworms Library graded readers. Retold for Learners of English by Rosemary Border. Conradin is ten years old. He lives alone with his aunt. He has two big secrets. The first is that he hates his aunt. The second is that he keeps a small, wild animal in the garden shed. The animal has sharp, white teeth, and it loves fresh blood. Every night, Conradin prays to this animal and asks it to do one thing for him, just one thing. This collection of short stories is clever, funny, and shows us ‘Nature, red in tooth and claw’. In other words, it is Saki at his very best.
A level 3 Oxford Bookworms Library graded readers. Written for Learners of English by Harry Gilbert. In our world today a hummingbird is a small, brilliantly coloured bird that lives in the tall trees of tropical forests. In the far distant future, Hummingbird (Hummy for short) is a girl of sixteen who lives somewhere in the Galaxy, on a planet called Just Like Home. She has the name ‘Hummingbird’ in big letters on all her clothes, but she has never seen a real hummingbird. She has never seen any living animal or bird at all. The Book of Remembering says that there were once many animals on a planet called Earth, but that was before the Burning, a long, long time ago…
A level 3 Oxford Bookworms Library graded reader. Written for Learners of English by Tim Vicary. Is there anyone who has not looked at the dark sky, and the shining points of light above us, and asked themselves questions about what is out there? Where did our planet come from? When did the universe begin? Could we live on another planet? And one question above all – is there life anywhere else in space? Begin a journey into space – where spacecraft travel at thousands of kilometres an hour, temperatures are millions of degrees, and a planet may be hard rock – or a ball of gas. In space, everything is extraordinary…