Moby Dick

‘Breach your last to the sun, Moby Dick!’ cried Ahab. ‘Thy hour and thy harpoon are at hand!’ Why does Captain Ahab look like a man who’s being crucified? How did he come by that hideous scar and the false leg made of a whale’s bone? And why is he obsessed by Moby Dick, the great white whale? Ishmael, the new recruit, has other strange shipmates. There’s Queequeg for instance, covered in weird tattoos and selling shrunken human heads. And what of the shadowy figures creeping on board the whaling ship Pequod? Ahab leads them all in reckless pursuit of Moby Dick. Will he succeed in killing the whale, or will Moby Dick lure Ahab and his crew to destruction?

Real Reads are accessible texts designed to support the literacy development of primary and lower secondary age children while introducing them to the riches of our international literary heritage. Each book is a retelling of a work of great literature from one of the world’s greatest cultures, fitted into a 64-page book, making classic stories, dramas and histories available to intelligent young readers as a bridge to the full texts, to language students wanting access to other cultures, and to adult readers who are unlikely ever to read the original versions.

Herman Melville (1 August 1819 – 28 September 1891) was an American author best known for his book, "Moby Dick".



The Scottish novelist and academic MARGARET ELPHINSTONE's first novel was published in 1987. Her latest, The Gathering Night, was published in 2009. She is Emeritus Professor of Scottish Literature at Strathclyde University in Glasgow. Apart from spells of academic work in the USA, she has spent most of her working life in various parts of Scotland including Shetland, Edinburgh and Glasgow.