ESL-Chat Blog: The Wonderful Adventures of Nils

ESL-Chat Blog

The Wonderful Adventures of Nils

Winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1909 — the first woman to be so honored — Swedish novelist Selma Lagerlöf (1858–1940) was a gifted storyteller whose writings were often tinged with the supernatural and rooted in the sagas and legends of her homeland.

She secured her reputation as a children’s-book author with The Wonderful Adventures of Nils, long considered a masterpiece of children’s literature. Written at the request of Swedish school authorities and first published in 1906, it is the enchanting and remarkably original tale of Nils Holgersson, a mischievous boy of 14 who is changed by an elf into a tiny being able to understand the speech of birds and animals.

Brilliantly weaving fact and fiction into a breathtaking and beautiful fable, the story recounts Nils’s adventures as he is transported over the countryside on the back of a goose. From this vantage point, Nils witnesses a host of events that provide young readers with an abundance of information about nature, geography, folklore, animal life, and more.

Here is another link on YouTube

Book information:
Reading age: 5+
Word count: 156000
Number of unique words: 8000, Word list
Number of pages: 360
Year: 1906
Links: Amazon, Wikipedia, Gutenberg, Librivox, YouTube, Goodreads, LibraryThing, Common Sense Media, Printables, Lexile

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