[children] English eBooks for young Germans

[GGK]

Hi,

can You recommend me some good and easy reading eBooks for young german readers (female, 12 years) to get better in english?

..sorry...wrong forum...

Thanks...
GGK from germany

[issybird]

Hi, GGK, and welcome.

I've moved your thread to the Recommendations forum, where you might get better results. I'll give it some thought, myself.

[cromag]

You don't mention any genres you might be interested in, but you might check out the science fiction novels of Andre Norton. The author was a woman -- her real name was Alice Mary Norton -- and her books should be very inexpensive (or free). She was very well known for writing Young Adult science fiction (but I still like them, even today).

You might try looking for her on Amazon. I assume you can also buy from Baen in Germany (I'm in the US, and don't know for sure):

http://www.baen.com/catalog/category...orton/id/1860/

Have fun!

[Doitsu]

Originally Posted by GGK

can You recommend me some good and easy reading eBooks for young german readers (female, 12 years) to get better in english?

Independent German publisher dtv offers several bilingual English-German books.

Most of them should be suitable for your daughter.

MR member mmat1 has also uploaded a free English-German book with short stories by Arthur Conan Doyle.

BTW, if you have a fairly recent registered Kindle model and share it with your daughter, make sure to download the following optional dictionaries:

Merriam Webster's Advanced Learner's English Dictionary
Oxford English - German Dictionary
Oxford German - English Dictionary

(These on-demand downloads are free if your Kindle is registered with an Amazon account.)

Also make sure to enable the built-in flashcard app.

You also might want to repost your question to the German MR forum.

[hildea]

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:

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.

[Pulpmeister]

I understand back in the Soviet Union days, Agatha Christie was allowed because of the relative simplicity of language and grammar, and was therefore of use as a teaching tool.

[GGK]

Thanks a lot for all your recommendations. Now I will find a book for my little girl!

Thanks

GGK

[sadkingbilly]

Perhaps the Percy Jackson or (perhaps even better) the Young Wizard series? Characters are about her age in the first book and they get a bit more adult during the series (nine books).