My current students are teenagers of intermediate or lower intermediate level of proficiency. I believe that any text with pictures and simplified language would be much more appealing than a text from an official webpage like The Wheel Bet. So, I think that the second text could suit my students’ needs, as it has got an attractive layout, paragraphs are clear, pictures support reading comprehension, complex syntactic or morphological constructions have been reformulated and the length of the text is adequate.
Some adaptations could be done, though.
An audio version of the tale could be used. I tried RoboBraille but I wasn’t satisfied by the outcome, as it didn’t sound natural. So, I think it would be better if the tale was recorded by the teacher, a native speaker or a “gifted” story-teller so that it becomes more vivid.
I would have also included some more pictures (especially next to words students are not familiar with) and more direct speech, eg the actual words of the Mayor.
Another idea would be to present the story with a PowerPoint presentation where text, pictures and audio can merge and make the story much more interesting and motivating.