Member Reviews
This was a really easy and quick read that summarized Wuthering Heights. It also had pictures which are great for kids and a family tree which made the entire story more understandable. I tried to read the original before and wasn't able to finish it so having this book available to understand the story was great. This little book seems like a great idea for anyone who struggles to read classics as well as children. I expected it to be longer but overall, it was a great, abridged version.
I have never read Wuthering Heights so cannot comment on the accuracy of this adaptation but I enjoyed it and think these sorts of adaptations are a fantastic way to introduce the Classics to children.
Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for my ARC.
I liked the idea of introducing children to classics, but even as an adult I found this difficult to follow. The writing felt clunky and I had difficulty keeping track of who the many characters were and what exactly was happening and why. It is written in first person narrative, yet never explains to the reader who that person is, it just jumps into the story with an illustration of a man. Maybe this classic is not the right choice for this kind of project.
I received a free ebook from NetGalley.
Wuthering Heights is one of my favourite classic reads, with its wild moors and complicated love story. The raw and visceral love between Heathcliff and Cathy is laid bare. I was so excited to read this version for younger readers, but worried whether it could capture the same intense atmosphere whilst also making it appeal to a younger reader. I have to say, it is a wonderful edition. My almost 10year old was enraptured with the story. A little spooky and haunting without being frightening, with easily accessible language and beautiful illustrations. She is keen to read more classics like this.
This Easy Classics version of Wuthering Heights summarizes the original tale and adds some illustrations for younger readers. I believe this version oversimplifies the story and to a sense loses part of the original story's essence. Although this is the case, it does a decent job for younger readers.
Thank you NetGalley and Sweet Cherry Publishing for the free copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.
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I love that Sweet Cherry Publishing is taking so many classic novels and turning them into easy readers. I don't personally believe in generalizing things as being inappropriate or not when it comes to classic novels because it really depends on the kids. I just love the idea of making these books more accessible to younger readers as it will hopefully open a door for them to read the actual books later on.
This was okay for what it is. It does a good job of getting down the overall plot but I feel like something is missing here. So much of Wuthering Heights is the emotions of the characters and it really feels like all of that was glossed over here. I never felt any of the emotions of the characters in this especially from Cathy and Heathcliffe which I feel is the most important part of the original novel.
The art in this is cute but I do wish they actually made Heathcliffe a POC. I know this is something that is still debated on whether or not he actually is a POC but there are references to his dark skin and he's called black in the original so I would have liked that reflected here as well.
This is a really cute introduction to Wuthering Heights (and I can't believe I just said cute and Wuthering Heights in the same sentence but here we are) but overall feels lacking compared to some of the other Easy Classics I've read.
What an absolutely beautiful book. The illustrations were so captivating and the story was still just as good this go around.
I often have a hard time reading classics for multiple reasons: the writing is often blocky, the language is hard to understand, and they're often quite dull. I was expecting, since this is a children's book, to no longer face those issues...I was wrong.
It was hard to keep track of everything that was going on, it felt as though information was just being thrown about willy-nilly. It also would have benefited from being simplified. I really don't know how children are expected to understand what was going on when even I can't. Another thing to note is that there were quite a few spelling errors (unless it was just old timey speak? And if so, that should have been scrapped right away). I can't say I know much about Children's fiction, but I feel as though Adult themes such as violence certainly should not be included...this book did not shy away from it.
I did not like this book nor do I think it is suitable for children.
I volunteered to review a free ARC of this book for NetGalley.
I love Wuthering Heights. I am not sure what it is about the book but I have read it several times over the years. So when I saw that there was an abridged version that was written to make the story more accessible to a younger audience.
To be honest, I felt as though this book was more like a summary than an abridged re-telling. It had the essentials of the story, but I didn't feel as though it had the emotions of the story. While I understand that it was written for children and therefore some of the emotions of the original would not be appropriate (honestly, this is kind of a weird story to abridge for kids anyway), but I do not think I would have liked the story had this been my first introduction it. Wuthering Heights is a complicated story of love, the choices that we make, and how those choices impact our own lives and the lives of our loved ones. This is a concept that is hard to translate to younger readers, and I do not think this author did a good job of it.
Are the essentials present? Yeah. I suppose they are. Do I think this is a successful abridgement? Not really. I would not recommend this book.
*I received a free digital copy via netgalley in exchange for my honest opinion.
Two stars may make this look a failure – that it is an attempt to bring the original to a modern, young audience and that it doesn't work. But I dare say it does. The two stars are however my personal opinion, and they're based on the fact I think the original is an unreadable, meritless pile of cack, and have done so ever since secondary school demanded of me that I thought otherwise. I didn't find anything here to make me see it anew, for this was still so far removed from both what I want to read today, and what I wanted to read when I was the age of the target audience. I can't really blame the creatives here for that, but I still cannot recommend such turgid dross in any form on anyone. If you like that kind of thing, fair play, but include me out.
a beautiful classic you can read over and over again. there have been many retellings of this beautiful story bt nothing beats the original.
I love the original book and the OG author. Definetly think the OG story isn't a children's read. Of course, it makes sense to adapt it. I like the cover of this book and the purpose/idea behind the adaptation. The execution left me with a bit of a mixed feeling. I think that overall it was a good read which captured most of the original story's main ideas, themes, and characters. In that regard, it has done its job.
Thanks to Netgalley, Sweet Cherry and Stephanie Baudet for this ARC in return for my honest review. Wuthering Heights is an iconic classic that I first read many moons ago. It's a much loved story and one that I return to again and again. This edition opens up the story to a new era of readers that hopefully go on to read Emily Bronte's version in years to come. I enjoyed the story and the illustrations.
I thought that this was a great retelling of Wuthering Heights and they have really managed to cover the story well in a select number of pages.
The plots main parts were all covered and you got to experience the relationships well. I would hope that this book would be used for children to read the full version at a later date having been tempted to find out more after reading this one as you could almost read it as a “highlights” book.
I liked the illustrations that were used to bring the book to life. The pot itself is quite completed with the various different relationships and the author has done a great job in my view.
It is 4 stars from me for this one – highly recommended!
I have always wanted to read the works from this trilogy of sisters, the Brontës. I never have, and so I enter into this children’s collection while I am, myself, in my infancy of consuming literature.
I love the use of the family tree in the beginning of the story, I would have spent hours obsessed with the lineage, and scandalized by the intermarriages of these characters as a child.
I like the writing style, but I’m not sure it was the best decision to properly portray the characters. On page 18, Heathcliff is described as “dark-skinned,” but the illustration of him portrays him whiter than a sheet. I think it’s important not to white wash, and not to send children mixed messages about race. Coloured illustrations would be preferable to black and white.
Typo on page 24; “He le the room just as Edgar Linton came in.”
Typos on page 25; “I lied my arm to show the small bruise…”
“Edgar le and and Cathy burst into tears…”
Typo on page 36; “until all he had le was the house.”
Typo on page 43; “you le me, Heathcliff…”
Typo on page 48; “Linton was oen ill.”
Typo on page 50; “next few months, I oen found her…”
Possible typo; due to the repeated dropping of ‘ft’ in all of the above typos —there is a constant use of “aer” in the story, which I thought might be slang, and now I assume that the keyboard has dropped the word “after.”
I enjoyed this children’s edition of Wuthering Heights, and think it’s a great way to make classics beloved among young people. Care should be taken with editing the many typos found within before publication.
This is a pretty good abridgment. It keeps things simple so a young audience can follow it but captures the overarching story well—which isn’t easy to do with a book as complicated as Wuthering Heights! The illustrations are fun, stylized, & visually appealing. Overall, it’s a great way to introduce kids to a classic work of literature.
An excellent telling of this classic for a younger audience. The story was not lost and I enjoyed revisiting Cathy and Heathcliff’s story having read the full version many years ago.. I thoroughly recommend this book to engage children and get them interested in reading some of these classic stories. Well done!
I was interested in reading this book to see what exactly the differences were between the actual Wuthering Heights and a "child's version" was. I think it's a great idea to introduce children to the classics in a way they understand and are interested in; a sort of gateway until they are able to fully comprehend the actual material. I don't think I personally ever would've read this as a kid, but that's because I was the weird little reader who was determined to read all the greats by the time I hit 5th grade.
I think Stephanie Baudet did a good job relaying the character's development, plot, and story to fit that of a child's point of view. The only reasons I don't give it five stars is because 1) it's not technically her book, just a re-written version and 2) I feel some key elements are missing from the original Wuthering Heights. Although I do understand it's simply not possible to include how eloquently worded the original was, I felt some of this material lacked substance simply because it was written in 21st century style.
As an educator, I am always looking for versions of classics to entice my teens to read more classics and to read independently. I would recommend this to a reluctant reader or a young reader preparing to read more of the classics. The illustrations are engaging and the story follows the classic story with lots of engagement for younger readers.
In adapting Wuthering Heights into an Easy Classic for children, Stephanie Baudet does an exceptional job of keeping some beautiful language, while distilling it down to the basics of the story plot. I chose this book out of curiosity, as I really couldn't remember much more than the names and places of the original story from my school days. It was an interesting refresher on the overall plot for me and on the whole, well done. I'd expect this would be very helpful to someone having trouble with the original or who wanted a clear, basic distillation of the plot.
The illustrations were clear and fun, the storyline wasn't as dark or scary as I'd have expected from my memories of the actual book, and the author did a good job of helping keep the relationships as clear as possible. I think it is a difficult and mildly dreadful story, adapted to easy understanding in a skillful way. With the plot boiled down only to the essentials, it didn't seem like such a worthwhile tale, and really not something I think children would get much value out of.
As a former English major, I certainly studied Wuthering Heights in school and spent time writing various essays about the dark natures and relationships it depicts. I'm not sure that I loved it then. That does make it a little more difficult for me to love and recommend the children's version of the same story.