Abstract: Primary and secondary schools are the key period for students to form good reading habit.
Reading classics is especially important. Focusing on the status of shallow reading among teenagers
in China, and taking Notre Dame de Paris as an example, the paper makes a comparative study of the
same chapter of the unabridged translation edition and simplified translation edition by means of word
segmentation, emotion analysis and social network analysis and from lexical, syntactic and semantic aspects.
The result reveals a significant difference in vocabulary, rhetorics, syntax, characters and plot between the
two editions. To a certain extent, the simplified edition destroys the originality and self-consistency of the
classics. It thus questions the necessity of having two editions in the teenagers’ education, and recommends
instead guiding reading classics in accordance with teenager readers’ respective reading ability. It also
points out that teenager readers should retain the right to choose classics to their interest to ensure the
readability of reading.

Key words: Teenagers reading, Classic reading, Simplified editio, Text analysis, Text emotional analysis