Meet Toad, Mole, Rat and Badger... four lovable characters who behave more like people than animals. Follow them on a wild adventure as Toad gets into a lot of trouble and must fight the evil weasels. How will his friends help him? And will Toad learn his lesson?

The Express Publishing Showtime Readers is a brand new series of books at four levels, which introduce students to classic children?s stories in English, using a unique approach with special emphasis on dramatization.

Students first enjoy the story as a reading text in several two-page episodes with beautiful illustrations. Each episode is accompanied by language activities to help comprehension and consolidate learning.

The same story is then brought to life as a complete musical play which students can perform at the end of the school year.

Each reader includes a biography of the author, a brief summary of the plot, character descriptions and a picture dictionary. The accompanying audio CDs provide a fully-dramatized recording of both the reading text and the play, together with all songs, incidental music and sound effects.

The Teacher?s book includes a key to the reading activities, plus the play script with full stage directions, sheet music and lyrics for all the songs, as well as detailed suggestions about choreography, set design and construction, costumes and more.

For classes without sufficient time to stage a full production of the play, there are charming cut-out characters to be used in a "puppet theatre" presentation.