Penguin Readers Level 2: The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (ELT Graded Reader)

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.

The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876) is the story of a boy in Missouri in the 1840s. Tom Sawyer's parents are dead and he lives with his aunt in a small village next to the long Mississippi river. One night, Tom and his friend, Huckleberry Finn see Injun Joe kill Dr Robinson. "We can't say anything about it. Or we will die," says Tom.

But then the wrong man goes to prison...

Penguin Readers is a series of popular classics, exciting contemporary fiction, and thought-provoking non-fiction, written for learners of English as a foreign language. The series is aligned to the Common European Framework and includes language activities that help develop key skills.

The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, a Level 2 Reader, is A1+ in the CEFR framework. Sentences contain a maximum of two clauses, introducing the future tenses willand going to, present continuous for future meaning, and comparatives and superlatives. It is well supported by illustrations, which appear on most pages.

About the Author

Mark Twain's real name was Sam Clemens, and he was born in 1835 in a small town on the Mississippi, one of seven children. He smoked cigars at the age of eight, and aged nine he stowed away on a steamboat. He left school at 11 and worked at a grocery store, a bookstore, a blacksmith's and a newspaper, where he was allowed to write his own stories (not all of them true). He then worked on a steamboat, where he got the name 'Mark Twain' (from the call given by the boat's pilot when their boat is in safe waters). Eventually he turned to journalism again, travelled round the world, and began writing books which became very popular. The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn are his most famous novels. He poured the money he earned from writing into new business ventures and crazy inventions, such as a clamp to stop babies throwing off their bed covers, a new boardgame, and a hand grenade full of extinguishing liquid to throw on a fire. With his shock of white hair and trademark white suit Mark Twain became the most famous American writer in the world. He died in 1910.