Minnie's Pet Monkey

Leslie, Madeline, 1815-1893Project Gutenberg · United StatesDec 2019

2.4

Word count: 56K words
Chapters: 6

Summary

Project Gutenberg was the first provider of free electronic books, or eBooks. Michael Hart, founder of Project Gutenberg, invented eBooks in 1971 and his memory continues to inspire the creation of eBooks and related technologies today.Minnie's Pet Monkey by Madeline LeslieAuthor: Leslie, Madeline, 1815-1893,Language: English, Class: PZ: Language and Literatures: Juvenile belles lettres, Release Date: Sep 14, 2008

Editor's review

This work comes from the hand of Madeleine Leslie, a nineteenth-century American writer of children's literature, and is one of her series of stories featuring "Minnie" as the protagonist. The story centers on a little girl named Minnie and the pet monkey she keeps, and through small everyday incidents presents the emotional bond between children and animals, while also carrying an educational message about responsibility, patience, and kindness to the weak and vulnerable. Leslie's children's stories are plain in language and even in pacing, making them suitable as entry-level material for children reading independently and for parents to read aloud at bedtime. The book is released as a free e-book by Project Gutenberg and is easy to obtain, but note that it is the original English text and was written long ago, so some wording and sentence patterns bear the marks of their era and may require a dictionary or notes while reading. Overall, this is a short, gentle classic children's book, well suited to gaining a sense of early English-language children's literature.

Who it's for

A good fit for

Parents who want to give their children original English short stories for parent-child reading
Learners with some English foundation who want to try reading classic children's literature in the original
Readers interested in nineteenth-century British and American children's literature and animal-themed stories
English teachers who need short English materials for supplementary classroom reading

Not a good fit for

Young children with no English reading ability who are looking only for Chinese-language books
Readers expecting complex plots and fast-paced modern adventure stories
Beginners who need extensive notes and a modern Chinese parallel text

Reading tips

Read through once to grasp the plot, then look up new words paragraph by paragraph and build your own vocabulary list.
When reading with a child, pause after each chapter and have the child retell what happened between Minnie and the monkey.
Pay attention to details about caring for animals and, after reading, discuss with your child what responsibilities come with keeping a pet.
If you meet obscure old-fashioned expressions, skip them for now and follow the overall course of the story rather than agonizing over every word.

About the publisher

Project Gutenberg United States · Founded in 1971

Project Gutenberg is a digital publishing project focused on public-domain ebooks. Its publishing direction centers on classic literary works whose copyright has expired, covering genres such as poetry, drama, fiction, and epic. Representative books include Lyrical Ballads by Wordsworth and Coleridge, Proust's Du côté de chez Swann, Shakespeare's Macbeth and The Complete Works of William Shakespeare, Homer's The Iliad, Dante's La Divina Comèdia: Purgatòri, Cervantes's The History of Don Quixote, Volume 2, and Grahame's The Wind in the Willows. Its author resources consist mainly of classic Western writers such as Wordsworth, Proust, Shakespeare, Homer, Dante, Cervantes, Grahame, and Tolstoy. Its publishing feature is the provision of freely accessible ebooks in EPUB and Kindle formats; it is not a traditional publisher, and publicly available information is limited.

FAQ

What age of child is this book suitable for?

As an original English story, it is better suited to upper-primary students who already have basic English reading ability, or to younger children reading it with a parent. The specific age should be judged by the child's English level, not by age alone.

What are the features of the Project Gutenberg edition?

Project Gutenberg provides a free electronic text that is easy to access and can be read on many devices. This edition is the original English text, with no Chinese translation or detailed notes, and the layout is mainly plain text, making it suitable for readers who have their own dictionary.

What is the main educational message of the story?

Starting from Minnie's daily care of her pet monkey, the story guides young readers to see that caring for animals requires patience and a sense of responsibility, and it also touches on how to treat naughty, disobedient small animals; it is a gentle work of character education.

Can I understand it with only average English?

The sentences are generally not long, but because of the era in which it was written, some vocabulary and expressions differ from modern English. Readers with junior-high-level English or above who are willing to look up words can basically understand it; if your vocabulary is limited, it is best to use a dictionary or read it together with someone.

Comments

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About the author

Leslie, Madeline, 1815-1893 Author

Madeline Leslie (Leslie, Madeline, 1815–1893) was a nineteenth-century author known for writing for children and families; details of her life are limited in publicly available sources, and she is known today mainly through the many works she left behind. Twenty of her works are held in this collection, most of them in the inspirational and coming-of-age category, including Minnie's Pet Cat, Little Frankie and his Mother, Bertie's Home or, the Way to be Happy, The Pearl of Peace or, The Little Peacemaker, The Lost Kitty, and Little Robins' Love One to Another. Judging from these titles and themes, her writing often centres on childhood life, family relationships, pets and nature, harmony and good deeds, gently conveying to young readers lessons of honesty, kindness, and happiness in simple language suited to reading together with parents, and is fairly representative of children's literature of her time.