The Scarlet Letter

Front Cover
Real Reads Limited, 2014 - Fiction - 64 pages
Hester Prynne stands defiantly on a scaffold before hostile Puritans in seventeenth-century Boston, Massachusetts. The baby in her arms and the bright scarlet letter 'A' on her gown are evidence and punishment for the shame she has brought on her religious neighbors. Will Hester continue to conceal the name of the husband who sent her away from Europe years before as well as that of the father of her baby? Will the husband get his revenge on the man who has shamed him? Will that man admit his past and join Hester and her daughter Pearl? Or is the matter out of their hands, waiting to be decided between the forces of the Lord and of Satan?

Real Reads are accessible texts designed to support the literacy development of primary and lower secondary age children while introducing them to the riches of our international literary heritage. Each book is a retelling of a work of great literature from one of the world's greatest cultures, fitted into a 64-page book, making classic stories, dramas and histories available to intelligent young readers as a bridge to the full texts, to language students wanting access to other cultures, and to adult readers who are unlikely ever to read the original versions.

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About the author (2014)

Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804-1864) was an American novelist and short story writer. Much of his writing centres on New England, many works featuring moral allegories with a Puritan inspiration. His fiction works are considered part of the romantic movement and, more specifically, dark romanticism. Bri grew up in a small town in Oklahoma, and in 2005 moved to New York to study illustration at the Fashion Institute of Technology, where her favourite mediums were scratchboard and ink. Raised and educated in Massachusetts, Sean Connolly now lives in Wiltshire, England, where he works as a writer and editor, specialising in children's books. His best-known titles are The Book of Totally Irresponsible Science (2008, now in its eleventh printing), The Book of Potentially Catastrophic Science, and Perfectly Perilous Math (2012).

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