Penguin Readers is a graded reading series for English Language Teaching (ELT) markets, designed for teenagers and young adults learning English as a foreign or second language.

With carefully adapted text, new illustrations, language practise activities and additional online resources, the Penguin Readers series introduces language learners to bestselling authors and compelling content. Titles include popular classics, exciting contemporary fiction, and thought-provoking non-fiction.

The Picture of Dorian Gray, a Level 3 Reader, is A2 in the CEFR framework. The text is made up of sentences with up to three clauses, introducing first conditional, past continuous and present perfect simple for general experience. It is well supported by illustrations, which appear on most pages.

An artist paints a beautiful young man called Dorian Gray. When Dorian sees the picture, he decides to give his soul to keep his beautiful face. He lives a bad life and he is bad to many people, but his face never changes. However, in a room upstairs, the portrait gets uglier and uglier.