Describe one of your favourite books from your childhood

IELTS Cue Card Sample 106 – Describe one of your favourite books from your childhood

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Last Updated: Thursday, 20 February 2020 11:40

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IELTS Speaking Part 2: IELTS Cue Card/ Candidate Task Card.

Describe one of your favourite books from your childhood.

You should say:

• what it is/was
• who is the writer of the book
• what was the story of the book

and explain why it is one of your favourite books from your childhood.

Model Answer 1:

I loved to read different kinds of books when I was growing up as a child. In fact, every time, there was a new children’s book in the market, I would have to get my hands on it. Of course, I didn’t really care to remember about those books, after reading them, that much except for a few books. Today, I would like to talk about one such book.

The name of this book was named “Charlotte’s Web”.  The book, written by E.B. White and published in 1952, was considered to be White’s most famous novel. In fact, it’s sold more than 45 million copies since its first publication and had been translated into 23 languages. Eventually, the book had made its way into several film adaptations as well. In 1970, the novel earned White the Laura Ingalls Wilder Medal, one of the highest honours in children’s literature.

Anyway, the novel tells the story of a livestock pig named Wilbur and his friendship with a barn spider named Charlotte. When Wilbur is in danger of being slaughtered by the farmer, Charlotte writes messages praising Wilbur (such as “Some Pig”) in her web in order to persuade the farmer to let him live.  At the end of the story, while Wilbur gets to be very famous at a country fair with the help of Charlotte message writing skills, Charlotte herself reaches the end of her life after laying an egg sack. But before dying, Charlotte entrusts her eggs to Wilbur who takes them back to the barn, guarding them until they hatch. However, while most of the newly-born spiders leave Wilbur, three of them stay behind and befriend Wilbur, who lives a long and happy life surrounded by Charlotte’s descendants. 

Anyway, it is my favourite book from my childhood because the characters and descriptions of farm life in the book looked so surreal to my little mind. Besides, no other books, which I had read up until then, had awakened my imagination to give me a heavy heart as the anatomy and sad demise of a spider’s life, called “Charlotte”, in that timeless classic.

Sample Answer 2: 

‘The Diary of a Young Girl’ which is also known as ‘The Diary of Anne Frank’, was one of my most favourite books in my childhood. I was so touched by this book and enjoyed it so much that I read it 2-3 times. This book was published from a diary written by a young girl named Anne Frank. My father gave this book as my 11^th birthday gift and I read it when I was 11 years old. I have even read it when I grew up and was a student at the college. To my surprise, the book was as appealing and touchy as I found it in my childhood.

The book was adapted from the diary Anne Frank, who was a teenage girl around 13 years old at the time of writing her diary. She originally wrote in Dutch language and later this book was translated into more than 60 languages worldwide. She wrote the diary when she and her family were in hiding for two years during the Nazi occupation of the Netherland during the Second World War.

Anne got a diary as a birthday gift when she turned to 13 and she began to write in it from 14^th June 1942. At that time, the Nazi invaded the Netherland and they were in hiding into a sealed-off upper room of Anne’s father’s office building in Amsterdam. They remain hiding there for two years and Anne wrote the events of the people living there, her personal thoughts and what happened at that time.

She has a good relationship with her father and a poor relationship with her mother. She admired her sister’s talent and intelligence and calm nature. She was initially irritated about Peter, a boy of her own age and later on they two became very close. Thus a little girl wrote about the relationship, people’s mentality, perceptions of human, little joys and sadness of life and revealed the suffering of the people due to the war.

Anne dies when she became 15 years old after they were betrayed and found by the Nazi. Sadly she dies only 2 weeks before the British troops liberated the prisoners from the concentration camp. After her death, the diary was bit censored and was published with her father’s permission who was the only survivor from the Nazi camp.

The suffering of the people during the war, the feelings and thoughts of a young girl, her complaints and happiness, her perception of life were so brilliant that it touched my heart. I could not leave the book until I finished it and I was deeply touched to read the thoughts of a young and brilliant girl who was killed at her 15.

Similar Cue Card topics:

Your ability to talk about this Cue Card Topic would enable you to talk about the following Cue Card Topics as well:

1. Describe your favourite book.
2. Describe a story you read in your childhood.
3. Describe a book from your school.
4. Describe a story you heard or read in your childhood.
5. Describe a gift you got on your birthday.
6. Describe something you had in your childhood.
7. Describe something you still have from your childhood.
8. Describe a book you recently bought for someone.