A woman finds a pot of treasure on the road while she is returning from work. Delighted with her luck, she decides to keep it. As she is taking it home, it keeps changing. However, her enthusiasm refuses to fade away. What Is Great About It: The old lady in this story is one of the most cheerful characters anyone can encounter in English fiction. Her positive disposition (personality) tries to make every negative transformation seem like a gift, and she helps us look at luck as a matter of perspective rather than events. This classic fable tells the story of a very slow tortoise (another word for turtle) and a speedy hare (another word for rabbit). The tortoise challenges the hare to a race. The hare laughs at the idea that a tortoise could run faster than him, but when the two actually race, the results are surprising. What Is Great About It: Have you ever heard the English expression, “Slow and steady wins the race”? This story is the basis for that common phrase. This timeless short story teaches a lesson that we all know but can sometimes forget: Natural talent is no substitute for hard work, and overconfidence often leads to failure. This short story is available on FluentU, so you can take advantages of all of FluentU’s great language-learning features while revisiting this childhood classic. Timmie Willie is a country mouse who is accidentally transported to a city in a vegetable basket. When he wakes up, he finds himself in a party and makes a friend. When he is unable to bear the city life, he returns to his home but invites his friend to the village. When his friend visits him, something similar happens. What Is Great About It: Humans have been living without cities or villages for most of history. That means that both village and city life are recent inventions. And just like every other invention, we need to decide their costs and benefits. The story is precisely about this debate. It is divided into short paragraphs and has illustrations for each scene. This is best for beginners who want to start reading immediately. Earth has been destroyed by war and no one lives on it anymore. The robots and the machines continue to function and serve human beings who have long ago died. What Is Great About It: The title is taken from a poem that describes how nature will continue its work long after humanity is gone. But in this story, we see that nature plays a supporting role and the machines are the ones who have taken its place. They continue their work without any human or natural assistance. This shows how technology has replaced nature in our lives and how it can both destroy us and carry on without humanity itself.