'Penguin Readers' are simplified texts designed in association with Longman to provide a step-by-step approach to the joys of reading for pleasure.

Susan Simmons discovers that her substitute teacher is an alien.

This book contains everything an English teacher could need to engage and captivate their pupils in contemporary poetry and prose. The step-by-step lesson plans are easy to adapt to suit individual teachers' needs, and include suggestions for utilising ICT and homework ideas. The reflective style of the photocopiable worksheets encourages pupils to draw on their own experiences when analysing the issues raised. The contents are themed to reflect the current curriculum, and to be entertaining for the teacher and students alike. Extracts include In Mrs Tilscher's Class by Poet Laureate, Carol Ann Duffy and To Sir, With Love by E.R.Braithwaite. English teachers and pupils aged 14-16 will relish this set of inclusive and accessible lesson plans and worksheets, although advanced younger pupils or adult learners, especially those on EFL courses, will also find them absorbing. All materials are also available for download from the Continuum website.

"Aliens love underpants, in every shape and size, But there are no underpants in space, so here's a big surprise...." This zany, hilarious tale is delightfully brought to life by Ben Cort's vibrant illustrations. With a madcap, rhyming text by award-winning Claire Freedman, this is sure to enchant and amuse the whole family! Perfect for joining in, this story is fantastically fresh and funny - you'll laugh your pants off!

According to Ilana Garon, popular books and movies are inundated with the myth of the “hero teacher”—the one who charges headfirst into dysfunctional inner city schools like a firefighter into an inferno, bringing the student victims to safety through a combination of charisma and innate righteousness. The students are then “saved” by the teacher’s idealism, empathy, and willingness to put faith in kids who have been given up on by society as a whole.“Why Do Only White People Get Abducted by Aliens?” is not that type of book. In this book, Garon reveals the sometimes humorous, oftentimes frustrating, and occasionally horrifying truths that accompany the experience of teaching at a public high school in the Bronx today. The overcrowded classrooms, lack of textbooks, and abundance of mice, cockroaches, and drugs weren’t the only challenges Garon faced during her first four years as a teacher. Every day, she’d interact with students such as Kayron, Carlos, Felicia, Jonah, Elizabeth, and Tonya—students dealing with real-life addictions, miscarriages, stints in “juvie,” abusive relationships, turf wars, and gang violence. These students also brought with them big dreams and uncommon insight—and challenged everything Garon thought she knew about education. In response, Garon—a naive, suburban girl with a curly ponytail, freckles, and Harry Potter glasses—opened her eyes, rolled up her sleeves, and learned to distinguish between mitigated failure and qualified success. In this book, Garon explains how she learned that being a new teacher was about trial by fire, making mistakes, learning from the very students she was teaching, and occasionally admitting that she may not have answers to their thought-provoking (and amusing) questions.