These stories came about on a whim one day when I was struggling with finding enough material for my students to read. The biggest problem is for students who do not really digest information yet. It is either because they truly do not have enough words to be able to have any function or they simply don’t listen or care because they are waiting for the Russian translation. The curse of Russian education.

Assuming that you have either gone past this problem already or if you’re lucky, like it used to be, you don’t have this problem, you still have the problem of reading quality stories. In my opinion, it is pretty rare where you can have a piece of literature that is easy enough to be understood by anyone but yet has enough nuance that people can learn from the language. In the beginning, I only understood children’s books as being the opportunity to have pictures go along with the story. I also thought that perhaps I could put together a story or two to give to them if I wanted to do more. And that’s what these three stories were about.

The point was to write serialized stories where there were logical stopping points to ask questions. This is a staple of the practical English method where you engage in some media or literature and then stop the situation in real time as if it is in real life with us right now. Here we can discuss the issues and if we see any problems with the story etc. We can also comment on the character of the characters if we’d like. Or we can even say what we see in them or how we imagine them and why. All very interesting like a moment in a museum. In this case, the story would progress one page of text at a time. The first story is five pages long. The second is 12. And the last is also five.

A new friend

This is the story of Jenny and Pete. On their way to play together, they find a cat on the road who has been hit by a car. They decide to take it to a veterinarian and in the course of the next few days, learn a lot about the stray cat situation in cities and the responsibilities of pet owners.

The rainy day

Oscar is in a miserable situation. His mother has told him that he can’t go out because it’s raining but being stuck in the house is too boring to stand. He calls his friends and they are all in the same situation. Suddenly, he gets this remarkable idea that if they truly understand the schedule of their parents, they could probably get out and play some football and wash their clothes in time for everything to be normal when their parents came home. And for some reason, an entire gang of boys agreed to try. And indeed, it was the greatest football game in their lives. Nothing is better for a boy to be playing football in the rain.

Unfortunately, one mistake after another leads to a string of catastrophes leading to the inevitable conclusion. This is a very popular story and people read it in good humor always.

My father and I

This story is told as a narrative from the perspective of a man who finds out that his father is involved in a new relationship with a beautiful young woman. The issue is that he is 91 years old and she is 35. The story is intriguing and the sun takes it upon himself to look after his father. He finds out some things about the woman that changed his mind about her. She perhaps is not so much the villain as he believed and suddenly finds he is somewhat smitten with her himself. Such a triangle.