Flying Home — Stephen Rabley

Longman Easystarts is a series of low level readers designed for students who are just starting to read and who want to read books which are simple but not childish. The stories are considered particularly suitable for students strting English at secondary school. The language level is pitched lower than Longman Structural Readers Stage 1 (which has a basic vocabulary of 300 words) and the vocabulary, structures and sentence length are carefully controlled. Each page of the book is made up of 2/3 of illustration and 1/3 of text, and the illustrations should facilitate and reinforce comprehension as well as making the books attractive to students. There are questions at the back, and an accompanying cassette is available which contains readings of all six stories in the series. "Flying Home" is the story of a parakeet who escapes from his cage in New York and sets off to find his rainforest home. Stephen Rabley has written several Longman Structural Readers, including "Customs and Traditions of Britain", "The Gold Lasso" and "Photo of the Tall Man".