LLCER Update and Two Upcoming Reading Guides

There are a few changes in the LLCER 1ère set texts list for 2023-2026 and lots of you have been asking if we are going to publish a Reading Guide for Fahrenheit 451. The answer is yes, and we're also going to publish our first Film Guide for 1ère: West Side Story.

Œuvres littéraires :

• Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451 (1953) ;
• Mark Haddon, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time (2003) ;
• Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird (1960) ;
• Edgar Allan Poe, The Fall of the House of Usher, 1839 - The Tell-Tale Heart, 1843 (les deux nouvelles comptent pour une œuvre) ;
• Carson McCullers, The Heart is a Lonely Hunter, 1940 ;
• Oscar Wilde, The Importance of Being Earnest, 1895.

Œuvres filmiques :

• Stanley Kubrick, 2001: A Space Odyssey, 1968 ;
• Jerome Robbins & Robert Wise, West Side Story, 1961.

New

Our Reading Guide for Fahrenheit 451 will be published in early November. Meantime, you might like to use the resource we produced on Bradbury for the centenary of his birth.

Bradbury’s 1953 masterpiece is set in a dystopian future where books are banned. The protagonist, Guy Montag, is a fireman, whose job isn’t to extinguish fires, but to burn books. (451°F is the temperature at which paper burns.) Then he meets a young woman, Clarisse McClellan, who resists the dictates of the society they live in, and Montag begins to have doubts about his work.

The Fahrenheit 451 Reading Guide arrived in shops on 23 November.

Coming Soon

Our Reading Guide for West Side Story will be published in February.

West Side Story is a 20th century retelling of Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet set in a working-class neighbourhood. The Capulets and Montagues are replaced by street gangs, the Jets and the Sharks, representing different immigrant groups. The 1961 film is an adaptation of a 1957 Broadway musical which features songs by Leonard Bernstein and Stephen Sondheim and choreography by Robbins.

Why not check out this Lumni programme about the film presented by Erwan Gouraud and Lynda Itouchène, the author of our guide. We also have a downloadable resource about Steven Spielberg's recent remake.