Accessing the classics

This guide aims to strengthen reading ability while deepening readers' understanding of major literary works. Its method is gradual: it moves people from accessible, engaging texts toward harder ones, building their skills and their interest at the same time. Educators in middle and high schools, adult basic education and ESL programs, and readers' advisors will find it useful, and it is designed so that even readers still developing their English can take part in the pleasures of classic literature.

Rosow traces Western literature from its earliest myths through medieval stories and the works of the Renaissance, Romantic and Modernist periods. Along the way she explains how to make the best of that literature easier to reach. Titles covered include ancient epics such as Gilgamesh and Beowulf, Chaucer's tales, the major works of Shakespeare, Austen, Poe and Dickens, and more recent authors like Virginia Woolf, John Steinbeck, Ernest Hemingway and J.R.R. Tolkien.

Each author section is arranged as a ladder. It starts with picture book retellings and proceeds through audio-supported and simplified editions to the most demanding texts. Every recommended title carries a rating of start here, next read, support here or challenging read, and related titles and audio or video versions are noted where they exist. Brief author biographies and summaries help build background knowledge. The Mark Twain section, for instance, opens with a short biography, then offers illustrated books about Twain, readers' theatre scripts, a collection of his stories, illustrated novels, and an illustrated edition of Life on the Mississippi with an audio version.

Because many of the editions listed are older, the book also serves as a collection development tool for libraries, as well as a resource for young adult librarians and educators working with adult learners.