Tooth and Claw – Short Stories

Saki

Oxford Bookworms LibraryLevel 3

A level 3 Oxford Bookworms Library graded readers. Retold for Learners of English by Rosemary Border.

Conradin is ten years old. He lives alone with his aunt. He has two big secrets. The first is that he hates his aunt. The second is that he keeps a small, wild animal in the garden shed. The animal has sharp, white teeth, and it loves fresh blood. Every night, Conradin prays to this animal and asks it to do one thing for him, just one thing.

This collection of short stories is clever, funny, and shows us �Nature, red in tooth and claw’. In other words, it is Saki at his very best.

Saki

Tooth and Claw – Short Stories

TOOTH AND CLAW

SHORT STORIES

In each of the following stories there is a wild or a dangerous animal. The animals can hurt and kill. And yet all the stories take place in houses, gardens, a small wood – safe, civilized places where we do not expect to meet wild and dangerous animals. So why are they there? Why has Saki brought these fierce creatures into our homes?

The answer is that we want them to be there. Of course, we do not want wolves in our gardens all the time; that would be very inconvenient. But sometimes – when we have an unwelcome visitor, or when we have to be polite when we want to be rude – sometimes a real wolf would be very useful indeed. Saki’s animals are sometimes funny, and they are sometimes cruel. But they always bite through what we pretend, and uncover the real emotions beneath.

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First published in Oxford Bookworms 1991

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ISBN 978 0 19 479135 9

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Illustrated by: Jenny Brackley

Word count (main text): 8255 words

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e-Book ISBN 978 0 19 478657 7

e-Book first published 2012

Sredni Vashtar

Conradin was ten years old and was often ill.

�The boy is not strong,’ said the doctor. �He will not live much longer.’ But the doctor did not know about Conradin’s imagination. In Conradin’s lonely, loveless world, his imagination was the only thing that kept him alive.

Conradin’s parents were dead and he lived with his aunt. The aunt did not like Conr