If you would like to do more reading for practice and pleasure, here are some ideas. Most of these are books and resources I think would be good for middle- to upper-level adult ESL students. (The Storybooks section has some links for beginning level ESL students.)
Novels
Little House on the Prairie series by Laura Ingalls Wilder (easy history, American culture)
books by Lois Lowry
Big Fish by Daniel Wallace
The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd (American culture)
The Dark Is Rising books by Susan Cooper (fantasy)
Animal Farm and 1984 by George Orwell (political satire and future fiction)
The Little Prince (English translation) by Antoine de Saint-Exupery
books by Ernest Hemingway
books by Elizabeth George Speare
books by Roald Dahl (some are for children, but are interesting and culturally relevant)
Lord of the Flies by William Golding
Non-fiction articles
Time or Newsweek magazine (higher reading level)
Reader’s Digest – easy, short stories about many subjects
Graphic novels (comic books)
17 Free, Downloadable Graphic Novels
Storybooks
Children’s Storybooks Online has illustrated books for beginning readers to more advanced readers. Scroll down for lists for young children, older children, and young adults.
Other resources
Searchlit.org
This website helps you find many free online texts. It lets you choose which level of reading you want to look for (beginning, middle and strong readers) and you can search by “grade” level (for instance, 7th graders are about 12 years old) and you can choose short stories, poems, novels and plays.
I will add to these lists as I have more ideas. I hope they help!
(Updated 1 June 2009)
