THE VOLKSWAGEN BEETLE

This book is designed to support poor readers by giving them overtly adult material but where the language has been calculated using a reading age scale on a computer program.

Read how Adolf Hitler himself wanted a cheap, simple car to be mass produced for the new German road system. Many people are also amazed to find that it was Ferdinand Porsche of Porsche 911 fame who was the lead engineer on the car.
In German, “ Volks’ means Folk or people and "wagen’ means car so the Volkswagen was literally the ” peoples’ car’. We will also read how Major Ivan Hirst from the British Army had to remove a bomb at the end of the second world war, from the VW factory and get production going again.

The book will cover the similar car that was a secret weapon against the Nazis in the Second world war and the financial settlement between Volkswagen and the Czechoslovakian car company Tatra.

Finally we read of Herbie the VW that could drive itself in the Herbie movies and how the car had to be adapted for a rear seat driver with a camera.

The material in this book should be accessible to an year 8 student and as such should be ideal reading material for the vast majority of students in schools and F.E. colleges. This book is in a series on old technology and is specifically designed to develop reading in teenage males. We were asked by a Midlands College to provide something that encouraged young males to read, since they were literally not reading anything.

Since many of them will be weak readers, the book also comes with an audio recording on a disc. The student can then, if they need to, listen to the audio as they read. This will be of interest to schools, colleges and academies where there are reluctant readers.