Matilda,
Roald Dahl. Penguin Readers. Level 3
Matilda is a gloriously funny children’s book
written by Roald Dahl, arguably the most successful children’s writer in the
English language. In 1996, the book was made into a highly successful film
starring Danny DeVito (also the director), Mara Wilson and Rhea Perlman.
Matilda is
about a very clever little girl named Matilda. She can speak perfectly at the
age of one and a half, and by the age of four, she can read complicated adult
books. However, Matilda has one problem – her parents are nasty! Her father is
a dishonest car dealer, and neither he nor his wife takes an interest in their
daughter. In fact, all they want to do is watch TV. Matilda decides to teach
her nasty parents a lesson. She glues her father’s hat to his head, and then
tricks her parents into believing that there is a ghost in the sitting room.
When Matilda
is five years old, her parents send her to the local village school, where she
finds a friend in her kind– but extremely poor – class teacher, Miss Honey.
Miss Honey immediately realises that Matilda is a genius and tries to help her.
However, it is difficult for her because the headmistress, Miss Trunchbull, is
a terrible bully and doesn’t like Matilda. Everyone is terrified of Miss Trunchbull
– that is, everyone except Matilda! One day, Matilda realises that she has some
very special powers, and she uses these powers to defeat Miss Trunchbull and
help Miss Honey.
Read more about Roald Dahl.
My
Fair Lady, Alan Jay Lerner. Penguin Readers. Level 3
My Fair Lady tells the story
of Eliza Doolittle, who is a poor girl selling flowers on London streets until
she meets Henry Higgins, a professor of linguistics.
Chapter 1:
Higgins hears Eliza shouting
in her harsh ‘Cockney’ accent in Covent Garden. He says to his new acquaintance,
Colonel Pickering, that after six months of lessons with him, he could teach
Eliza to speak with such a pure upper-class accent that no one would be able to
tell where she came from.
Chapter 2:
Eliza’s father, Alfred
Doolittle was thrown out of the pub as he hasn’t got enough money to pay for
his drinks. Eliza gives him some money.
Chapter 3:
Eliza finds her way to the
professor’s house and offers him money to give her lessons. Pickering is intrigued
and offers to pay for the cost if Higgins can really back up his claim. Higgins
is interested in the experiment, and agrees. An intensive makeover of Eliza’s speech,
manners, and dress begins in preparation for her appearance at the Embassy
Ball.
Chapter 4:
Eliza’s father comes to
Higgins to extract some money from him. Higgins is impressed by the way he speaks.
Meanwhile, Eliza goes through many forms of speech training. Just as things
seem hopeless, Higgins softens his harsh attitude and she suddenly ‘gets it’.
Chapter 5:
Higgins takes her on her first
public appearance to Ascot Racecourse. She makes a good
impression, but shocks
everyone by her Cockney accent and slang when she gets excited. She captures
the heart of a young man named Freddy Eynsford-Hill.
Chapter 6:
Finally, Higgins takes Eliza
out to the Embassy Ball, where she stuns everyone. After the ball, Higgins is
so excited about his triumph and his pleasure that the experiment is now over.
Eliza feels used and abandoned.
Chapter 7:
She walks out on Higgins and
goes back to Covent Garden, but nobody recognises her now. She sees her father
there and finds out that he’s getting married.
Chapter 8:
After Eliza is gone, Higgins
soon realises that he has ‘grown accustomed to her face’. Higgins finds Eliza at
his mother’s house, and he attempts to talk her into coming back to him. Eliza
rejects him and leave.
Chapter 9:
Higgins makes his way home, missing Eliza very
much. He plays his recordings to listen to Eliza’s voice. To Higgins’s great
delight, Eliza returns to him.
The Nº1
Ladies’ Detective Agency, Alexander McCall Smith. Penguin
Readers. Level 3
The No.1 Ladies’ Detective
Agency is the first in a series of books by Alexander McCall Smith about Mma
(Mrs) Precious Ramotswe. This large African lady has an instinctive talent for
solving mysteries, so she decides to set up the first (and
only) ladies’ detective agency
in Botswana. The book follows the story of the agency in its early days, the
mysteries that Mma Ramotswe is hired to solve and the growing friendship between
the heroine and the charming Mr JLB Matekoni.
Most of the mysteries that Mma
Ramotswe solves are not serious crimes. For example, a rich Indian gentleman
asks her to spy on his daughter because he thinks she has a boyfriend. And a
puzzled woman asks her to discover the true identity of the old man who calls
himself her ‘Daddy’. Mma Ramotswe also returns a stolen car to its owner,
unravels an insurance scam and discovers some cheating doctors. Each of the stories
is very charming, and the perpetrators of the crimes are often shown to be
normal human beings with strengths as well as flaws in their characters.
There is also a very serious
crime which Mma Ramotswe is asked to solve: a young boy goes missing but the
police do not want to get involved. Then Mma Ramotswe’s good friend, Mr JLB
Matekoni, finds a witchdoctor’s bag with a human bone in it. It seems that the
boy has been kidnapped and murdered – and Mma Ramotswe and Mr JLB Matekoni
begin the search for the boy’s killers. They become involved with dangerous men
and threatened with the dreadful power of witchcraft. The book ends
dramatically with Mma Ramotswe rescuing the boy from slavery and reuniting him
with his family.Mma Ramotswe has a special friendship with Mr JLB Matekoni. He
is quite similar to her father, who she loved more than anyone. But her father
is dead now and Mma Ramotswe has lost much of her trust in men since she was abandoned
by her abusive husband when she was younger.
In the middle of the book, Mr
JLB Matekoni proposes to Mma Ramotswe but she refuses. The book follows their
developing friendship from this point until the end of the book, when Mma Ramotswe finally agrees to marry Mr JLB Matekoni
Food for
Thought, Pauline Francis. Penguin Readers. Level 3
Joe is working on his uncle’s
farm for the summer holidays. Then someone starts ruining the crops on the neighbouring
farm because they are GM (genetically modified). Joe has a lot to think about –
a lot of ‘food for thought’. Who is behind the destruction and why? Are GM crop
trials safe or not? Who is right – the government and its scientists, or the
protesters who trash these crops? Only a week later, during a storm, Joe has to
decide. Can Kate, the daughter of a GM farmer, still be Joe’s friend? And will
Anna, one of the protesters, still like him if he doesn’t help her?
Chapter 1:
One summer, Joe reluctantly
agrees to work on his uncle’s organic farm in Cornwall. He starts work. His
aunt and uncle are worried about the genetically modified (GM) crops being
grown by the neighbouring farmers, the Ladocks.
Chapter 2:
Much to the annoyance of his
aunt and uncle (and a girl called Anna, who is working on their farm for the
summer), Joe makes friends and goes surfing with Kate, the Ladocks’ daughter.
He defends Kate when Anna criticizes her, but is secretly attracted to Anna.
Chapter 3:
After an encounter with a
group of protesters dressed as vegetables and an afternoon’s surfing with Kate,
Joe is taken by Anna into the neighbouring farm, where she explains the dangers
of GM crops. They meet Kate, who admits that she was one of the protesters
dressed as vegetables. Anna, however, is still unfriendly to her and refuses to
go surfing with them.
Chapter 4:
That night, Kate and Joe see
Anna with a group of people looking at a map near a bridge. The next day, Anna
denies being near the bridge, and Joe begins to think he cannot trust her. When
she invites Joe to help her trash the neighbouring field of GM crops, he
refuses but promises not to tell anyone about her plans.
Chapter 5:
Anna and her friends destroy the crops but are seen
by Mrs Ladock, who calls the police. Kate and her parents are furious with Joe
for not warning them about Anna’s plans. Joe visits the Ladocks a few days
later to apologise but also to explain why he couldn’t tell them. He had made a
promise to a friend, and that was important to him. Eventually, Kate says she
forgives him, and Joe realizes that he can trust her more than he can
Anna.
Rabbit Proof
Fence, Doris Pilkington Garimara. Oxford Bookworms. Level 3
Fourteen-year-old Molly and her cousins Daisy and
Gracie were mixed-race Aborigines. In 1931 they were taken away from their
families and sent to a camp to be trained as good 'white' Australians. They
were told to forget their mothers, their language, their home. But Molly would
not forget. She and her cousins escaped and walked back to Jigalong, 1600
kilometres away, following the rabbit-proof fence north as part of their guide
across the desert. This is the true stoy of that walk, told by Molly's
daughter, Doris. It is also a prize-winning film.
