Dodie Smith

Penguin Readers is an ELT graded reader series for learners of English as a foreign language. With carefully adapted text, new illustrations and language learning exercises, the print edition also includes instructions to access supporting material online. Titles include popular classics, exciting contemporary fiction, and thought-provoking non-fiction, introducing language learners to bestselling authors and compelling content. The eight levels of Penguin Readers follow the Common European Framework of Reference for language learning (CEFR). Exercises at the back of each Reader help language learners to practise grammar, vocabulary, and key exam skills. Before, during and after-reading questions test readers' story comprehension and develop vocabulary. I Capture the Castle, a Level 4 Reader, is A2+ in the CEFR framework. The text is made up of sentences with up to three clauses, introducing more complex uses of present perfect simple, passives, phrasal verbs and simple relative clauses. It is well supported by illustrations, which appear regularly. The poor Mortmain family move to an old castle. Mr Mortmain's daughter Rose wants a rich husband. Her sister, Cassandra, wants to be a writer like her father. But when the Mortmains meet their two rich neighbours, Simon and Neil Cotton, both Rose and Cassandra have their lives changed forever. Visit the Penguin Readers website Exclusively with the print edition, readers can unlock online resources including a digital book, audio edition, lesson plans and answer keys.

Rebel Voices: Disruptive Stories from Trailblazing Women - a new Puffin Classics collection, celebrating International Women's Day 2023. Seventeen-year-old Cassandra Mortmain and her family live in a beautiful, ramshackle castle - but sadly that's not quite as exciting as it sounds when you're having to use the barn door as a kitchen table, and new clothes are literally made out of old curtains... Determined to forge her own path, Cassandra practices her writing skills by keeping a diary - observing the eccentric comings and goings of her beloved-but exasperating family, and pondering what life may have in store for her. But things are about to get delightfully more dramatic with the arrival of two glamorous Americans - and soon the Mortmain's lives will never be the same again. Rebel Voices is a new six-part Puffin Classics collection of strikingly designed, highly collectible books, written by female authors, and celebrating courage, rebellion, strength and inspiration.

'I write this sitting in the kitchen sink...' This is the story of Cassandra, precocious and charming, who begins a journal detailing her life with her bohemian family in a crumbling old castle. On the cusp of adulthood, Cassandra meets the family's growing challenges of poverty and decay with indefatigable humour and insight. However, her life is turned upside down when the American heirs to the castle arrive and Cassandra finds herself falling in love. Both a gorgeous study of 1930s England and a sharp exposition of what it's like to be teenage girl, I Capture The Castle is a novel layered with eccentricity and nostalgia. Meet ten of literature's most iconic heroines, jacketed in bold portraits by female photographers from around the world.

'I write this sitting in the kitchen sink' is the first line of this timeless, witty and enchanting novel about growing up. Cassandra Mortmain lives with her bohemian and impoverished family in a crumbling castle in the middle of nowhere. Her journal records her life with her beautiful, bored sister, Rose, her fading glamorous stepmother, Topaz, her little brother Thomas and her eccentric novelist father who suffers from a financially crippling writer's block. However, all their lives are turned upside down when the American heirs to the castle arrive and Cassandra finds herself falling in love for the first time.