Penguin Readers Level 1: Little Women (ELT Graded Reader)

Description

Penguin Readers is a graded reading series for English Language Teaching (ELT) markets, designed for teenagers and young adults learning English as a foreign or second language. With carefully adapted text, new illustrations, language practise activities and additional online resources, the Penguin Readers series introduces language learners to bestselling authors and compelling content. Titles include popular classics, exciting contemporary fiction, and thought-provoking non-fiction. Little Women, a Level 1 Reader, is A1 in the CEFR framework. Short sentences contain a maximum of two clauses, introducing the past simple tense and some simple modals, adverbs and gerunds. Illustrations support the text throughout, and many titles at this level are graphic novels. Little Women is the story of a poor American family in the American Civil War. The four sisters, Beth, Jo, Meg and Amy are very different. But together they work hard and help their mother and father. Sometimes their lives are very happy, and sometimes they are very sad. But the family's love always helps them.

Louisa May Alcott (1832-88) was brought up in Pennsylvania, USA. She turned to writing in order to supplement the family income and had many short stories published in magazines and newspapers. Then, in 1862, during the height of the American Civil War, Louisa went to Georgetown to work as a nurse, but she contracted typhoid. Out of her experiences she wrote Hospital Sketches (1864) which won wide acclaim, followed by an adult novel, Moods. She was reluctant to write a children's book but then realized that in herself and her three sisters she had the perfect models. The result was Little Women (1868) which became the earliest American children's novel to become a classic