Sharing Suzanne Kamata’s A Girls’ Guide to the Islands with EFL students

A Girls’ Guide to the Islands, by Suzanne Kamata and published by Gemma Open Door in 2017 is an ungraded text, and has been written for teen to young adult English language learners. Gemma Open Door specializes in publishing works for ESL learners and young adults with developing literacy skills. Kamata’s narrative differs from the titles in graded EFL reader series in Japan, as the target audience is English language learners in the United States. Kamata has created a text with appeal to young adult learners of a similar age to the young female protagonist. In this short Literature in Practice article, I aim to provide an explanation of why I chose an ESL reader instead of an EFL one, my reasons for choosing to read this story aloud to the class, and an outline of my creation of classroom activities.