Abstract
The present paper has been made as an introduction to Cambridge English Readers, dealing with 84 books with CDs, all of which are divided into 7 grades from "starter/beginner" to "advanced" levels. In general, what we call graded readers tend to be mainly made up of well-known English and American masterpieces specially rewritten for foreign learners of English with easier, limited vocabularies. Cambridge University Press, however, has boldly decided to make the series consist of only original novels and stories, which is certainly the most outstanding characheristic of Cambridge English Readers. In fact, the publisher seems to have a lot of confidence in this feature, boasting on the back cover of each book: "Cambridge English Readers is an exciting series of original fiction, (…) the stories in this series provide easy and enjoyable reading on a wide range of contemporary topics and themes." Although it cannot be denied that some of the series might turn out to not be as enjoyable as advertised, Cambridge English Readers are on the whole worth reading as ideal books for those who want to read novels in English.
The paper provides a gereral introduction to Cambridge English Readers, and brief summaries of the 84 books. Richard MacAndrew, Sue Leather, Margaret Johnson, and Antoinette Moses are regular Cambridge novelists; Frank Brennan has written a variety of interesting short stories for the series. There are several books with Japanese as main characters, for example, Judith Wilson’s Staying Together and Michael Austen’s Berlin Express. The former is a love story and the latter a thriller, both of which can be fully appreciated especially among young Japanese students of English.
