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English Audio Request

rmari
652 Words / 2 Recordings / 1 Comments
Note to recorder:

Moserate speed, please.

I must be mad, Mrs Phelps told herself, but to Matilda she said, "Of course you may try it."
Over the next few afternoons Mrs Phelps could hardly take her eyes from the small girl sitting for hour after hour in the big armchair at the far end of the room with the book on her lap. It was necessary to rest it on the lap because it was too heavy for her to hold up, which meant she had to
sit leaning forward in order to read. And a strange sight it was, this tiny dark-haired person sitting there with her feet nowhere near touching the floor, totally absorbed in the Wonderful adventures of Pip and old Miss Havisham and her cobwebbed house and by the spell of magic that Dickens the great story-teller had woven with his words. The only movement from the reader was the lifting of the hand every now and then to turn over a page, and Mrs Phelps always felt sad when the time came for her to cross the floor and say; "It's ten to five, Matilda."
During the first week of Matilda's visits Mrs Phelps had said to her, "Does your mother walk you down here every day and then take you home?"
"My mother goes to Aylesbury every afternoon to play bingo," Matilda had said. "She doesn't know I come here."
"But that's surely not right," Mrs Phelps said. "I think you'd better ask her."
"I'd rather not," Matilda said. "She doesn't encourage reading books. Nor does my father."
"But what do they expect you to do every afternoon in an empty house?"
"Just mooch around and watch the telly."
"I see."
"She doesn't really care what I do," Matilda said a little sadly. Mrs Phelps was concerned about the child's safety on the walk through the fairly busy village High Street and the crossing of the road, but she decided not to interfere.
Within a week, Matilda had finished Great Expectations which in that edition contained four hundred and eleven pages. "I loved it," she said to Mrs Phelps. "Has Mr Dickens written any
others?"
"A great number," said the astounded Mrs Phelps. "Shall I choose you another?"
Over the next six months, under Mrs Phelps's watchful and compassionate eye, Matilda read the following books:
Nicholas Nickleby by Charles Dickens
Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens
Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte
Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
Tess of the D'Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy
Gone to Earth by Mary Webb
Kim by Rudyard Kipling
The Invisible Man by H. G. Wells
The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway
The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner
The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
The Good Companions by J. B. Priestley
Brighton Rock by Graham Greene
Animal Farm by George Orwell

It was a formidable list and by now Mrs Phelps was filled with wonder and excitement, but it was probably a good thing that she did not allow herself to be completely carried away by it all. Almost anyone else witnessing the achievements of this small child would have been tempted to make a great fuss and shout the news all over the village and beyond, but not so Mrs Phelps. She was someone who minded her own business and had long since discovered it was seldom worth while to interfere with other people's children.
"Mr Hemingway says a lot of things I don't understand," Matilda said to her. "Especially about men and women. But I loved it all the same. The way he tells it I feel I am right there on the spot
watching it all happen."
''A fine writer will always make you feel that," Mrs Phelps said. "And don't worry about the bits you can't understand. Sit back and allow the words to wash around you, like music."
"I will, I will."

(From "Matilda" by Roald Dahl)

Recordings

Comments

Kitwistful
April 1, 2013

Sorry, I'm not much of an actor. That was really hard XD Sorry if I messed up the pronunciation on anything (those author names, that's gonna come back to get me one day). Anyways, good luck learning english ^^

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