Level 3: Billy Elliot

by Melvin Burgess

Book Overview

Pearson English Readers bring language learning to life through the joy of reading.

Well-written stories entertain us, make us think, and keep our interest page after page. Pearson English Readers offer teenage and adult learners a huge range of titles, all featuring carefully graded language to make them accessible to learners of all abilities.

Through the imagination of some of the world's...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1405881763
• ISBN13: 9781405881760
• Release Date: February 2008
• Publisher: Pearson Education ESL
• Length: 64 Pages
• Weight: 0.84 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.1" x 3.7" x 7.9"

Customer Reviews

Brilliant by far the best book i've read

It is just brilliant although it isn't very long you just have keep reading you cannot put it down it is just brilliant!

"It flows, like electricity...aye...that's it..electricity!"

When Billy is explaining what it feels like to dance, he basically summarizes the whole of this screenplay: "...starts out sort of stiff..." but then, he adds, the dance (and story) unfolds and becomes "a fire....electricity." Since I decided that Billy Elliot ranked as one of my favorite movies of 2000, I felt that the book would offer some insight and help to follow the whole of the story (boy those accents are hard to decipher at times in the movie!) This book, in screenplay form, offers all those one liners and dialogue parts you just missed while watching the movie. Pictures from the movie placed throughout the book are a nice added touch. A very satisfying screenplay of a very satisifying movie! It is simply a wonderful tale of getting out of the hard places and truly soaring towards your goals.

A good read, but not up to par with the play or movie

Curiously, this version of Billy Elliot (a novelization written by Melvin Burgess) was obviously written to appeal to young adult readers of about jr. high/high school age, who, strangely enough, would not likely be old enough to go see or even really interested in a film such as Billy Elliot in the first place. This novelization unfortunately washes away the directness and vividness so apparent in the written screenplay. The descriptions interspersed within the dialogue take much of the original starkness of the play and movie away, leaving Billy to seem rather flat emotionally. The strife and hardship of Billy's struggle to attain his goals in light of his difficult family situation is largely defused. Lee Hall's excellent screenplay is FAR superior!! Pick that up and by-pass Melvin Burgess's attempt.