Like all books written in the 18th century, Gulliver's Travels suffers from being slightly too long and slightly too old-fashioned for many of today's readers, especially teens. The long, verbose sentences take some getting used to, and the background events being targeted in Swift's satire aren't necessarily common knowledge amongst your class. These present some very real challenges for you as the teacher.

Because this is a hard text for kids to get into, you might want to start each class by doing a quick rehash of the latest reading, helping students pull out key plot points before they move onto the next section. As you move along, they'll likely get better at contributing to this conversation, becoming both more familiar with this old style of writing as well as more confident in their ability to make sense of it. And hey, if nothing else, it's a great way for you to gauge how well they're handling the text in a low-pressure way (a.k.a. before they write papers).