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Fairy tale & fantasy

One Christmas Eve in 19th-century Nuremberg Uncle Drosselmeyer arrives with presents for everyone and Clara gets a very special one: a nutcracker. That night the toys come alive and Clara discovers that her Nutcracker is much more than a toy. Together they go to the magic Land of Sweets and are greeted with a celebration with music and wonderful dances. But on Christmas morning there is another surprise for her...

Dossier:
The ballet of 'The Nutcracker'
Series: Green Apple | Level: Starter | Exam: ket trinity

Book, audio CD/CD-ROM

Mystery & horror

It's fun to get ready for Halloween and it's even more fun to have a spooky Halloween party!
But what happens to a group of young teenagers when their Halloween party becomes a living nightmare? Find out what horror is all about in this spine-tingling story!

Dossiers:
The Origins of Halloween
Salem Halloween Cookies
Make a Bat

Exit test
Series: Green Apple | Level: Starter | Exam: ket trinity

Book + audio CD/CD-ROM win/mac

Mystery & horror

When Kate and Mike Sullivan invite their friend Carlos to sail to the Farallon Islands on their father's new boat, The Pelican, they expect to see the fascinating birds and animals which live there.
But this exciting boat trip on the Pacific Ocean turns into a night of horror when ghastly ghosts from the past appear... and the three friends make an altogether different discovery.

Dossier:
Gulf of the Farallones National Marine Sanctuary

After Reading
Series: Green Apple | Level: Starter | Exam: ket trinity

Book + audio CD/CD-ROM win/mac

Adventure

Five children go on holiday and discover a sand fairy near their home! The sand fairy is an unusual creature that grants wishes, and this is just the beginning of an incredible adventure for them.
Their wishes are strange, silly...and sometimes dangerous. They go from one exciting adventure to another until finally they realise the power of a wish and whether or not they really want one!

Dossier:
Making Wishes

Exit test
Series: Green Apple | Level: Starter | Exam: ket trinity

Fairy tale & fantasy

Bathsheba, a beautiful Weather Witch, lives with her cat, Cobweb, on top of a high mountain near the village of Sunnyville. The people in the village don't know about Bathsheba or about the important job she does for them. Her life is peaceful until one day she goes down to the village and meets some of the people there, including a very special soldier…

Dossiers:
The Weather in Great Britain
Potions

After Reading

Series: Green Apple | Level: <a href="http://www.blackcat-cideb.com/static

Human interest

Black Beauty is a touching story written from a horse's point of view. Black Beauty, a handsome, intelligent horse, lives in Victorian England on a peaceful farm with a wonderful master.
But his life changes when he is sold to different masters-some are kind and understanding, but others are very cruel…
Published in 1877, Black Beauty is surely the most loved animal story of all times – an unforgettable classic for readers of all ages.

Dossiers:
Horses
The Royal Society for Protection of Cruelty to Animals

Exit test

Series: <a href="http://www.blackcat-cideb.com/static/green-apple-en.html?

Retold by Gina D. B. Clemen

American English

Adventure

Join Tom Sawyer and his friends in a series of fantastic adventures on the Mississippi River: looking for ghosts in a graveyard, witnessing a murder, living as pirates on a deserted island, attending their own funerals, getting lost in an enormous cave and finding ...
The Adventures of Tom Sawyer reflects many of Mark Twain's own adventures growing up on the Mississippi River. A fast-moving story with unforgettable characters that captures the unique American spirit of the 1800s.

Dossier:
Life on the Mississippi River

Exit testSeries: <a href="http://www.blackcat-cideb.com/static/green-apple-en.html?TB_iframe=true&am

'I didn?t realize he was a werewolf at first. My nose isn?t at its best when surrounded by axle grease and burnt oil . . .'Mercedes Thompson runs a garage in the Tri-Cities. She?s a mechanic, and a damn good one, who spends her spare time karate training and tinkering with a VW bus that happens to belong to a vampire. Her next-door neighbour is an alpha werewolf - literally, the leader of the pack. And Mercy herself is a shapeshifter, sister to coyotes. As such, she?s tolerated by the ?wolves but definitely down the pecking order. As long as she keeps her eyes down and remembers her place, the pack will leave her in peace.Hardly a normal situation, but then, Mercy Thompson is not exactly normal herself. . . and her connection to the world of things that go bump in the night is about to

The eighth wonderful novel from Martina Reilly, an author who is going from strength to strength on Little, Brown's commercial list.
Hope Gleeson wants to go travelling, to escape her boring London life and plan a happier future. But the unthinkable happens - the plane taking her to sunnier climes experiences technical problems and crash lands. Hope is one of only seventeen people to survive, saved from death by the man sitting next to her. Hope wakes up in hospital with her best friends Adam and Julie at her side. They are taking her home to Ireland, they tell her, to recuperate. But home is the last place Hope wants to go - she has too many secrets to hide...The Summer of Secrets is the brilliant new novel from the wonderful Martina Reilly. Combining gentle humour with darker, r

A fantastically warm and funny first novel that has the humour of Sophie Kinsella and the heart of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood.
When Opal Mehta was six years old her parents moved from India to New Jersey so that they could get their child a place at the finest learning institution in the world: Harvard University. To achieve this goal, the Mehtas carefully and thoroughly constructed HOWGIH (How Opal Will Get Into Harvard). Opal's life so far has strictly adhered to this plan - cello lessons at age 6, foreign languages at 7, mechanical engineering classes, horticulture and mosaic art classes after that. Now, armed with a sterling set of academic and extra-curricular credentials, Opal has applied to Harvard. Failure is not an option. But the first question the admissions officer asks her

The dryly precocious, soon-to-be-fifteen-year-old hero of this engagingly offbeat debut novel, Oliver Tate lives in the seaside town of Swansea, Wales. At once a self-styled social scientist, a spy in the baffling adult world surrounding him, and a budding, hormone-driven emotional explorer, Oliver is stealthily (and perhaps a bit more nervously than he'd ever admit) nosing his way forward through the murky and uniquely perilous waters of adolescence. His objectives? Uncovering the secrets behind his parents' teetering marriage, unraveling the mystery that is his alluring and equally quirky classmate Jordana Bevan, and understanding where he fits in among the pansexuals, Zoroastrians, and other mystifying, fascinating beings in his orbit.
"It's in my interests to know about my par

Shows how our flawed strategies for perceiving risk influence our lives, often with unforeseen and sometimes - tragic consequences. This book uncovers one of the central puzzles of our time: why are the safest people in history living in a culture of fear?
We are the safest humans who ever lived - the statistics prove it. And yet the media tells a different story with its warnings and scare stories. How is it possible that anxiety has become the stuff of daily life? In this ground-breaking, compulsively readable book, Dan Gardner shows how our flawed strategies for perceiving risk influence our lives, often with unforeseen and sometimes - tragic consequences. He throws light on our paranoia about everything from pedophiles to terrorism and reveals how the most significant threats