Little Nothin's

This app is also an e-book: "English Learner 500 Short Stories for Beginner-Intermediate" (ISBN: 978-0-9915994-0-0), available at Amazon-Kindle, Apple iBooks, Google Play, Nook, Blio, Kobo, and Vook Store. It's 99 cents (cheap!).

These 500 and 100s of more stories, plus exercises and audio, are available free at www.eslyes.com.

See 2 sample stories below.

Dear Reader,

The complete title of this app is "Little Nothin’s—500 Short Stories about This and That." These stories (less than a minute to read) are stories about “nothing”—the things that we deal with, do, see, say, or think about, read about, or hear about while going about our lives. Many of the stories have a New York City (I live here!) context. Some stories will make you smile, and some will make you think. Some will remind you of someone you know, and some you’ll share with someone you know. Some might even make you (horrors!) want your money back. (Fugedaboudit!) Each story is exactly 150 words and is written in informal, everyday English. I taught adult ESL for 24 years. I originally wrote these stories for adult ESL learners, but they’re enjoyable reading for adult native English speakers too.

For adult English learners reading these stories, there are two numbers following each story title. The first number is the grade level; that is, “2.1” in Story 1 means that a second grader should understand the story. The second number, e.g., “91.3” in Story 1, is the Reading Ease score. The closer that number ascends to 100, the easier the story is to understand. (Google "Flesch-Kincaid" for details.) A third number (in parentheses) follows some story titles. That number tells you that the story is a multi-part story. For example, Story “6. A Walk on the Brooklyn Bridge (1) 3.7, 79.5” is part (1) of a 4-part story.

—Mike Carlson, Brooklyn, NY

FEATURES
* 500 fun short stories (for only ten shiny dimes!)
* Self-contained e-book app
* Clickable Table of Contents
* Swipe to turn pages
* Search
* Favorites
* Social media share
* Day/night settings

EARLY REVIEWS OF THE E-BOOK
* I really like the price! —Author’s brother-in-law
* My son, the author! What took you so long? —Author’s mom
* Stop doing stupid things just so you can write about them! —Author’s wife

TWO SAMPLE STORIES
19. A Fast Breakfast 3.3, 86.1
She was in a hurry. She wanted something fast for breakfast. He told her to have milk and cereal. She said that milk upset her stomach. “Don’t you know that by now?” she asked. He said there was soybean milk in the refrigerator. “What kind of cereal do we have?” she asked. He told her they had Grape Nuts and Shredded Wheat. “Yuck!” she said. “Don’t we have anything tasty?” He said that a spoonful of sugar would make the cereal taste better. “But sugar might raise my cholesterol,” she said. He said that sugar doesn’t raise cholesterol—meat does. “If you really want to lower your cholesterol, you should stop eating meat,” he said. She said she loved meat. She would never stop eating meat. Meat was much more important to her than her cholesterol level. “If someone invented steak cereal, I’d eat three bowls a day!” she said.

118. I Love New York City! 3.7, 82.7
“I love New York City,” said Eddie. “I wake up happy because I’m waking up in NYC. I sleep like a baby because I’m sleeping in NYC. It’s a big city chock-full of small, friendly communities. It isn’t the mean city that people see in the movies. It’s a city made for enjoying. It’s a city made for exploring. What’s not to love?” Barry said, “Ha! What’s not to love? Bags of smelly garbage are on the streets every day. Some sidewalks and subway stations reek of urine. Streets and subways—even the sidewalks!—are jam-packed. And the bikers—just yesterday a biker almost ran me over. They come at you from everywhere—from the front, from the back, and from the sides. When I step into the street, I look out for bikers first, cars second.” Eddie said, “Those things aren’t bad. They just add CHARACTER to our city.”