It's not always easy to guess what will work well for people who're learning a language. I wanted to practise my (very rusty) German, and thought "Heidi" would be a good start -- a children's book which I've read many times in Norwegian. But it starts with a lot of description of scenery, pretty advanced vocabulary, and some weird grammar that I've never seen anywhere else, so I gave up after a few pages.
I suggest Shannon Hale's "Princess Academy". It's a fairy tale type of book: When the prince is old enough to marry, the priests consult various omens, and decide where in the kingdom the new queen shall come from. Normally the prince goes there, attends a few balls, and picks some suitable noblewoman, but this time the priests have chosen a really poor, remote village. So a tutor goes there to teach all the unmarried girls the basics needed to qualify for princess: Dancing, deportment, conversation... and also reading, diplomacy, economics. It turns out it's not a book about a poor girl marrying a prince, it's about poor girls getting an education, and how that affects the whole village. I liked it a lot :-)
Here's how it starts, so you can get an idea about the language:
Quote:
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Miri woke to the sleepy bleating of a goat. The world was as dark as eyes closed, but perhaps the goats could smell dawn seeping through the cracks in the house’s stone walls. Though still half asleep, she was aware of the late autumn chill hovering just outside her blanket, and she wanted to curl up tighter and sleep like a bear through frost and night and day.
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