Reading Comprehension

Now your child can enjoy The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson as a Michael Clay Thompson language-illustrated classic. The novel is reproduced in its entirety and includes Michael's "language illustrations"—close-ups of poetic techniques, four-level analyses of interesting grammar, and comments about writing strategies. Challenging vocabulary is defined at the bottom of each page. The novel is a disturbing account of murder and personality, good and evil, and dangerous experiments in a foggy London of the nineteenth century. Michael describes it as “one of literary history’s great stories of intuitive inspiration.... The reasons that Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde are famous all lie within the book itself. It is an extraordinary book by one of literature’s most talented writers." In addition, Stevenson’s “On Some Technical Elements of Style in Literature” is included to demonstrate that the author knew what he was about in the craft of writing. Michael believes that Stevenson is under-appreciated as a serious writer and says that this essay is “one of the best statements in literary history of what a supremely talented writer was thinking."

Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (Stevenson) Sample Pages:

• View online
• Download PDF

Now your child can enjoy The War of the Worlds by H.G. Wells as a Michael Clay Thompson language-illustrated classic. The novel is reproduced in its entirety and includes Michael's "language illustrations"—close-ups of poetic techniques, four-level analyses of interesting grammar, and comments about writing strategies. Challenging vocabulary is defined at the bottom of each page. The War of the Worlds is the book that modern alien invasion stories are founded upon, and this gripping novel has lost none of its ability to excite in the years since it was first published.

The War of the Worlds (Wells) Sample Pages:

• View online
• Download PDF

Now your child can enjoy Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson as a Michael Clay Thompson language-illustrated classic. The novel is reproduced in its entirety and includes Michael's "language illustrations"—close-ups of poetic techniques, four-level analyses of interesting grammar, and comments about writing strategies. Challenging vocabulary is defined at the bottom of each page. According to Michael, "Treasure Island was first serialized in Young Folks magazine from 1881 to 1882 and then published in novel form in 1883. Stevenson created a world-unto-itself, with a ship’s-worth of pirates and rogues, good souls and bad. While reading Treasure Island, we feel the salt spray of the novel, hear the booming surf on the reef, and glimpse the quick wink of that smartest of pirates, Long John Silver. Jim Hawkins is a true spirit, navigating a path through the unworldly, even as circumstances become stranger and stranger. Stevenson soaks us in strong characters with vivid, rich names—rascals and thieves, lawyers and boys. From one’s first reading of Treasure Island, Long John Silver clunks into one’s inner reality with his wooden leg and his squawking parrot and his weasel words, and from that day forward, there is always an inner Long John lurking within us, ready to fool us once again." 

Treasure Island (Stevenson) Sample Pages:

• View online
• Download PDF