Authentic literature & media for the EFL curriculum
A teenage-detective novel on high school culture, identity conflicts, bullying and peer pressure. Hannah has committed suicide. Shortly after, her classmate Clay receives a package with a set of audio tapes. While Clay works his way through the tapes, the reasons for what happened to Hannah are revealed and he begins to see life at […]
“Five Notes After a Visit” follows an unnamed, female narrator travelling from England to Northern Ireland (Belfast/Derry) – where she was born – to visit her boyfriend Stewart. During her visit, she experiences troubles, tensions and a trauma that she reflects upon in diary-like notes. The recommended edition Ireland – Changes and Challenges: Short Stories […]
In this verse novel about homelessness, friendship and the willingness to help, 16-year-old Billy runs away from his abusive father – he much rather lives in an old railroad carriage than at what used to be ‘home’. There he meets a man called Old Bill, an alcoholic, and Caitlin, a rich but deeply dissatisfied girl. […]
The speaker of this poem negotiates the relation of the (female) self and its environment using the complex metaphor of a mountain. Helen Mort’s second collection of poetry “No Map Could Show Them” offers the readers a variety of perspectives on mountaineering, the human body and gender roles. Her poems negotiate proximity and distance, past […]
Jim the chimpanzee is having a bad day. He’s in a terrible mood and his friends don’t understand why he can’t just smile and be happy. Jim tries to take their advice, doing everything to look happier for everyone else. Nothing works. Multiple attempts at being “happy” and one minor meltdown later, he storms off […]
About this project
Lit4School ist eine gemeinnützige Datenbank mit Literatur und Medien für den Deutsch- und Englischunterricht. Sie wurde von der Englisch-Abteilung des ZLS entwickelt und wird gemeinsam von Mitarbeitenden des ZLS, des Instituts für Germanistik und des Instituts für Anglistik herausgegeben.
The novel, set in the year 2045 in a dystopian world, focuses on Wade Watts who enjoys his time in the virtual world of OASIS more than his reality, and he is not alone in this opinion. After the sudden death of OASIS’ creator who leaves behind puzzles on popular culture of the past, people […]
The adventure and comedy movie, belonging to the subcategory of buddy films, is set in the Outerbanks of North Carolina, where Zak, a young man with Down syndrome, has a dream- a dream bigger than living peacefully in a care home with the authorities watching over him. The young boy’s goal is to attend his […]
Chuck Mullin’s Bird Brain: Comics About Mental Health, Starring Pigeons, as the title already suggests, is a collection of several smaller comics depicting independent situations where pigeons discuss mental health issues. The individual comics range from one to four panels in colour. The book aims to reach a variety of audiences as, on one side, […]
The Boys in the Band was originally written by Mart Crowley and premiered as an off-Broadway production in 1968, one year before the Gay Liberation Movement emerged. The play is set in one evening in an apartment in New York City where Michael hosts a birthday party for his friends, all of them being gay. […]
Marshall’s Walkabout is a survival novel following two young siblings, Mary and Peter, from America, who, after a plane crash, are stranded in the Australian Outback. Plagued by starvation and exhaustion, their chances of survival in these unknown and strange lands seem to be low until they meet an Aboriginal boy who takes the role […]