4 CHAMPION!
Sorrel Pitts
© 2018 – StandFor Editorial Director Antonio Rios Editorial Manager Cayube Galas Editorial Coordinator Ana Carolina Costa Lopes, Renata Lara de Moraes Series Editor Nick Bullard Editorial Assistant Nathalia Thomaz Contributor Fernanda Valezini Ferreira Production Manager Mariana Milani Production Coordinator Marcelo Henrique Ferreira Fontes Proofreader Nicole Irving Art Manager Ricardo Borges Art Coordinator Daniela Di Creddo Máximo Design Yan Comunicação Cover Design Yan Comunicação Art Supervisor Patrícia De Michelis Art Editors/Layout Juliana Signal, Lidiani Minoda Illustrations Coordinator Márcia Berne Illustrations Alex Rodrigues Operations Director and Reginaldo Soares Damasceno Print Production Manager Dados Internacionais de Catalogação na Publicação (CIP) (Câmara Brasileira do Livro, SP, Brasil) Pitts, Sorrel Champion! : standfor graded readers, level 4 / Sorrel Pitts ; illustrated by Alex Rodrigues. -ed. -- São Paulo : FTD, 2018.
ISBN 978-85-96-01499-1 (aluno) ISBN 978-85-96-01500-4 (professor) 1. Literatura infantojuvenil em inglês I. Rodrigues, Alex. II. Título.
18-13959 CDD-028.5
Índices para catálogo sistemático: 1. Literatura infantil em inglês 028.5 2. Literatura infantojuvenil em inglês 028.5 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of StandFor. This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser. Rua Rui Barbosa, 156 – Bela Vista – São Paulo-SP – Brasil – CEP 01326-010 Phone 0800 772 2300 – Caixa Postal 65149 – CEP 01390-970 – www.standfor.com.br 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 Produção gráfica
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CHAMPION! Sorrel Pitts grew up in Wiltshire, England. She worked as a magazine editor before moving abroad to teach English as a foreign language in Turkey and Spain. On her return to the U.K., she became a Commissioning Editor for Macmillan Publishers and Editorial Manager for Oxford University Press and is now a freelance editor and writer. She has written Graded Readers for StandFor Readers, Harper Collins, and Oxford University Press. She is the author of Nuala (StandFor Young Readers Level 5), the story of a boy and a dog. Sorrel’s debut novel, The River Woman, was published in the UK in September 2011 by Indigo Dreams Press.
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Chapter
1
The Horse Sale
Sara Williams loved horses. On her bedroom wall there were lots of pictures of ponies, racehorses, show jumpers, and horses that lived in the wild. She dreamed of having a pony, but it wasn’t possible. Her family had very little money, and although their house had quite a big garden, it had no field or stable. “She gets it from her dad,” Sara’s mother said. “He loves horses, too.” The family lived in a small town in England, called Chesham. Sara’s father, Dennis – or Den – used to be a jump jockey. He rode racehorses over big fences when he was younger, and won a lot of races. But that ended two years ago, when he fell from a horse and broke his back. Now, he couldn’t move one side of his body very well. 5
Champion!
Den knew that Sara loved horses, but he was frightened to let her ride them. “I don’t want you to fall and be hurt like me,” he said, when she asked for riding lessons for her fourteenth birthday. “Anyway, horse riding is expensive, and we don’t have the money. Your mother’s working all the time to pay the mortgage because I don’t have a job.” It wasn’t easy for Den to find work, and the family quickly had money problems. Sara’s mother, Pauline, was a nurse, and she worked most evenings and nights at the hospital. Then, things got better for a while, because Den found a job working for Lord and Lady Armitage at one of the local stables. But one night, their best show jumper, Red Eagle, was stolen. Lord and Lady Armitage thought that Den was the thief, because he was the only person at the time who had a key to the stable. A camera also showed that he was there on the night. The police questioned Den for hours, and next week he was going to court. “I’m really worried, Pauline,” he said to his wife. “I don’t want to go to jail.” After Red Eagle was stolen, Den lost his job at the Armitage Stables. He became sad and quiet and he stopped looking for another job. “Who wants to give a job to a man with a bad back?” he said. But things in the Williams’ house soon got more difficult. An old friend of Den’s called Bruce came to visit while Pauline was at work, and told him about a local horse sale. “It’s on today, at Overton Farm on the other side of Chesham,” he said. “Come on, let’s go see the horses.” So the two men drove to the farm, and Bruce picked up a newspaper with some information about the horses. 6
The Horse Sale | Chapter 1
It was late afternoon now, and there weren’t many people at the auction. Only a few horses were still waiting to go into the ring. Den and Bruce stood by the ring and watched as a big brown horse was sold to a farmer called Simon Ross. “Nice horse, Simon!” Den shouted across the ring, because he knew the man. Simon lifted his hand and smiled. Then a red pony came in and walked around in slow circles as two men bid for her. She was sold for four hundred pounds. “That man’s buying her for dog meat,” said Bruce. “She’s wild, so no one can ride her. They brought her down from the mountains.” “Really?” said Den, turning to him. “That’s terrible. They caught her and sold her for dog meat?” Bruce nodded. “This must be her son,” he added. As he spoke, a smaller red pony with white feet and a white face came into the ring. His head was high, and his eyes were frightened as he trotted one way, and then the other. The two men who bid for the red horse now started bidding for her son. “Oh no,” said Den. “He’s so young. It’s terrible.” The red pony neighed to his mother, who neighed back, and then he turned and cantered nervously back across the ring before bucking and turning again. “One hundred and seventy pounds, one hundred and eighty pounds…” shouted a man. “Oh, no, this is terrible!” Den said again, and he put his face in his hands. “Two hundred pounds… does somebody bid me two hundred pounds?” shouted the man. 7