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Originally Posted by Gazella20
I had to read A Tale of Two Cities when I was 13 years old and I just loved it. But we were given the Penguin Readers Level 5 so the text was simplified into a more modern style. Maybe children find these classic novels boring because they had to read the original language and found it hard to understand it. Was that the case with you?
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Could well have been, but it's been waaay too many years since for me to remember the 'why.' I do, however, clearly remember the 'what!'
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P.S. I read the non simplified version of the novel at the age of 18 and it was completely different in terms of the language, format, the chapter titles and how they're divided. Reading the non-altered version made me feel that I'm really reading a classic. When I read the simplified version, I felt like I was reading a modern book that wasn't written a very long time ago.
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When my son was about 13, his class was reading Macbeth. And he couldn't stand it... As it happened, the local theatrical group at one of the universities in town was putting on its version of Macbeth, but done up in modern military dress. Still using the original language but set as a modern war story. I took my son to see it, and he loved it! Just giving him some reference point so that he could internalize what was going on made all the difference. But the second act he didn't even realize that the dialog was so archaic.
Stitchawl