Teeth and Claws (Bookworm. Oxford English-Chinese Parallel Reader)

Author: Zaki
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2004-01-01
Features: "The Bookworm" is a premium offering jointly brought to by the Foreign Language Teaching and Research Press and Oxford University Press. The Bookworm is quite an adorable image in English—imagine a "bookworm" so engrossed in books, tirelessly chewing on letters. Now, this "bookworm" has crossed the seas and landed gracefully in the hands of Chinese English learners. The Bookworm first gives you a letter—even if you currently only have a few hundred words, you can easily read world-famous works without much effort. The Bookworm will also remind you with its delicate chirping: to persevere in reading, to read widely and richly. By the time you finish the last book in the series, you may suddenly realize: you have transformed like a caterpillar into a butterfly, ready to take flight!
Each story in the series features a fierce animal as the protagonist. The scenes where they harm or devour humans reveal the cruel instinct of these creatures. The stories are whimsical and fantastical. But what surprises us even more is that these animals suddenly appear in elegant rooms, fragrant gardens, or quiet patches of woodland—places we consider safe and civilized. Why are they there? Why did Saki bring these beasts into our homes? The answer is, we wish them to be there. Of course, we don’t want a real wolf to always stay in our garden—that would be dull. But sometimes, when we encounter an unwelcome guest or feel deep-seated aversion yet must pretend to be polite—a real wolf can be quite useful. The animals Saki describes are sometimes funny, sometimes cruel; but they always tear away our masks, exposing our true emotions deep down.