Bookworm - (Level 4, Lower) (Suitable for Grade 10 and Grade 11)

Author: (British) Eliot, G. (Author), (British) West, C. (Adapted), translated by Zou Xiaoming
Publisher:
Publication Date: 2006-10-01
Features: "Grub Street" is a premium offering jointly presented by Foreign Language Teaching and Research Press and Oxford University Press for English learners. Grub Street is a rather adorable figure in English. Imagine such a "grub" who is utterly engrossed in books, tirelessly chewing on letters. Now, this "grub" has crossed the ocean and landed gently in the hands of Chinese English learners. Grub Street first gives you a letter, even if you currently have only a few hundred words, you can easily read world-class works. Grub Street 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 discover that you have transformed like a caterpillar into a butterfly, ready to take flight! The Weaver of Marans, in the quiet countryside of early 19th-century England, life followed an unchanging pattern. The changing of seasons was the same for the squire and his family living in the big house as it was for the villagers in small grass huts. Anything new or strange would be met with suspicion in a village like Ravello. The weaver Silas Marans was very strange. He lived alone, and no one knew anything about his family. If you didn’t know who his parents were, how could you trust him? He had a pale complexion and strange eyes, and he always stared because he had to work long hours at the loom every day, even on Sundays when he should have been going to church. He must be the devil’s friend, the villagers whispered to each other. Poor Silas! He was a sad, lonely man, his only friends being the shiny gold coins he earned from weaving, which he hid beneath the floorboards. But changes always happen, even in a quiet village like Ravello. There was a secret between the squire’s two sons, leading to arguments, conflicts, and death. It was on a snowy night, near Silas’s grass hut, that The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Have you ever thought about becoming someone else? Have you ever looked at someone you know and thought, "Why can’t I do what he does?" If you could become someone else, even just for a day, you could do whatever you wanted, whenever you wanted. No one would blame you for it, because no one would know it was you—after all, it wouldn’t be you anymore. How exciting would it be to become someone else! One day, just occasionally, but not for too long, otherwise, if you kept changing into other people, you might really become someone else and find it hard to turn back to yourself. These thoughts can be very dangerous for some people, especially for Dr. Jekyll, because he was a brilliant scientist who found a way to turn fantasies into reality. A Tale of Two Cities, In 1775, in a room on the top floor of a tavern in Paris, sat an elderly man with white hair, busy making shoes. He had been a prisoner in the Bastille for 18 years. Now he was free, but he didn’t know his own name or recognize his friends. All he knew was that he had to keep making shoes. On a carriage going to Paris sat Lucie, his daughter, whom he had never met. Lucie brought her father back to London, and under her love and care, he forgot his past and learned to live again as a free man. However, during the stormy days of the French Revolution, the past neither disappeared nor was forgotten. Soon, the dangerous secrets of the past drew Lucie and those she loved back to Paris, where the terrifying death machine—the guillotine—awaited the enemies of France. This series also includes: Gulliver’s Travels, Treasure Island, Black Beauty, The Scarlet Letter.