The Thing in the Sea

Part One of Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea by Jules Verne

Jules Verne published Vingt mille lieues sous les mers in 1870; the English translation followed in 1873. The dates, ships and positions in this episode are Verne's own — he built the opening out of what reads like a stack of real shipping reports, which is why it feels like news rather than fantasy. The Scotia was a real Cunard liner. Verne wrote about a great electric submarine crossing oceans at a time when real submarines were small, slow and dangerous, and much of what he imagined arrived within a lifetime. This is the first of two episodes.

Band

Yellow · Emerging readers, about 6 to 8

Length

medium · about 546 words in 5 sections · 4 pictures

Source

Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea, Verne, Jules · Project Gutenberg

First published

see the About page in the reader

Regions

Canada · United States

Included formats

• · Web reader and PDF
• · EPUB for e-readers
• · Home-print sheet
• · Folded booklet
• · Binder edition (8.5 × 11)
• · Worksheet
• · Quick Check (8 questions) with answer key
• · Read-aloud script
• · Colouring page

Readers are engineered from the original public-domain text with AI under HummingRead’s published canon and Content Philosophy, checked by automated audit and sampled by a person. Pictures are made with AI to HummingRead’s brief for each story. How a reader is made.