[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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You know Donald Duck, one of Disney’s most popular characters. Do you know Scrooge McDuck, Donald’s Uncle? Scrooge is so rich that he swims in a giant room full of gold coins. However, he was nor born rich. This book tells the story of Scrooge’s adventures traveling around the world and having many adventures, all while trying to get rich.
Each chapter of this book is a complete story about a different adventure, so you can easily just choose one instead of reading the whole book. As Scrooge travels the world, many of the characters speak world English (or with silly accents), so this book contains some interesting language. If it is too difficult, though, you can just read a story set in America, where most people speak American English. One important issue is that Scrooge encounters several “natives” and “aboriginals” in some of the stories. Because this is an older book, it uses some orientalist or racist stereotypes.
My two cents: This story is part of the American capitalist mythology of “pulling yourself up by your bootstraps.” It is all about working hard by yourself to earn a lot of money—you decide for yourself if the ending is “happy” or not…
