M…m…m…mimli mostri rewritten in Maltese by Clare Azzopardi

What can make a book gripping for children who are reluctant readers? Children who are not keen readers, are usually faced with a crucial problem: they usually find books aimed at their age quite difficult to read.

The reasons can be various: maybe they would not have had a good exposure to reading from an early age, or maybe they are dyslexic, or it could simply be that they are more comfortable reading in English, and find reading in Maltese more of an arduous task.

Consequently, the child will try to turn to easier books, with less words, with less complex sentences, and with less difficult vocabulary. In English books for reluctant readers are aplenty. They are planned in such a way that the reading level is easy but at the same time the interest level is more complex so as to keep the interest of older children.

However, in Maltese so far, there are no books which cater for 8-, 9- or 10-year old children whose reading levels are equivalent to children aged 4 or 5.

So most often these children have to turn to books which are aimed at young children – but these would turn them off completely as the storylines are usually childish and a 9-year-old would refuse to read something “babyish”.

In order to fill this gap, Merlin Publishers are launching a new series of five books, M…m…m…mimli mostri. They are all a bit spooky, witty and chock-a-block with mystery: IlFatat, L-Iskeletru, Is-Saħħara lKerha, Il-Vampir u Il-Babaw.

The stories and the pictures are aimed at older children, and are not in the least childish. At the same time, the vocabulary level and the sentence structure is contained in such a way so as to boost the children’s reading confidence in Maltese.

Based on Catalan tales, these stories are being adapted into Maltese by Clare Azzopardi.

In Il-Fatat we meet Count Karlesku who runs an advert in a newspaper for vacancy for castle ghost. The witch in Is-Saħħara lKerha wants to find a potion to stop scaring people. L-Iskeletru is the story of a child-skeleton called Għadmu who wants to play football with the other kids but seeing as his body is made up of bones, he cannot really kick properly. Lampir the vampire in Il-Vampir turns into a bat at night and goes in search of a dentist because his teeth are still not sharp enough to bite. And in Il-Babaw, we meet a bogeyman who has lost his knack of scaring children.

The M…m…m…mimli mostri series is available for sale at all bookshops or directly online from merlinpublishers.com