What happened to Dorian really makes me think about how important it is to care about staying young and beautiful forever.--Stacey, 13
I believe the only way to live, is to be true to oneself. The only way to get rid of temptation is to give into it. Young, rich and handsome, Dorian Gray seems to have it all. So why do people who were once his friends leave the room when he enters? Can there really be any truth in the dark tales that are told about him? And why does he keep his portrait locked away in an attic room? Two men hold the answer to Dorians secret. One is the artist, Basil Hallward, who paints Dorians portrait. The other is Lord Henry Wotton, who convinces the impressionable Dorian that youth and pleasure are the only things worth living for. Is Dorian Gray really as innocent as he seems? Can love and friendship save him from himself? Or will the secret of the picture of Dorian Gray be a secret he takes to his grave? Real Reads are accessible texts designed to support the literacy development of primary and lower secondary age children while introducing them to the riches of our international literary heritage. Each book is a retelling of a work of great literature from one of the worlds greatest cultures, fitted into a 64-page book, making classic stories, dramas and histories available to intelligent young readers as a bridge to the full texts, to language students wanting access to other cultures, and to adult readers who are unlikely ever to read the original versions.
Oscar Wilde (1854-1900) was an Anglo-Irish playwright, novelist, poet, and critic. He is regarded as one of the greatest playwrights of the Victorian Era. In his lifetime he wrote nine plays, one novel, and numerous poems, short stories, and essays. Kevin (Kev) Hopgood started his career in British comics in the mid-eighties where he worked on Zoids, Action Force and Doctor Who. Work on 2000AD followed, where he co-created the series Night Zero. In the early 1990s Kev started a three-year stint as the main artist on Iron Man, where he co-created the character War Machine. Paula Hammond has been in love with books since she was old enough to read them for herself. She had her first piece of work published when she was nine and, to date, has written over thirty fiction and non-fiction books, as well as a wide-range of educational resources.
