[Welcome to the EL Book Introductions series. These posts are all short (<180 words) introductions/reviews of books in the EL library. They focus on telling you what we think will be interesting for you, a college student and English learner, so use them to help you find the right book for you. You can also use the tags to find books about topics you might be interested in.]
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The English Lounge has the whole Magic Treehouse series, and you may have even read some of these books in Japanese when you were in elementary school. In each book, two children named Jack and Annie go on an adventure through space and time. Morgan le Fay (a famous witch in British literature) sends the children and their treehouse on special missions, where they learn about history, culture, and science. In Vacation Under the Volcano, they go back to ancient Rome to see the city of Pompeii before it is destroyed by a volcano. They learn about Roman culture, save an important from being destroyed, and run for their lives to escape the volcano.
Magic Treehouse is a good example of an “authentic text” (母語話者向け教材). Some students like to read textbooks that are written for language learners, but some like to read “real” books that native speakers also read. Of course, college-level authentic texts might be too difficult for Extensive Reading (多読), but children’s books might be appropriate for you. Magic Treehouse has pictures, the letters are the page are big and easy to read, and each chapter is short. This makes it very easy to read a whole book quickly. Finally, although it is a long series, you can choose any book and still understand almost everything.
My two cents: The Magic Treehouse series is written for children. Some students don’t want to read children’s books. However, if you don’t mind it, I can strongly recommend this series.
