Easy English books
Three complete classics whose chapters are short enough to read one at a time. The full original text, free, with a quiz at the end of each book.
Finishing a whole book in a foreign language is the thing learners say they want and the thing they most often abandon. It is rarely the words that beat them. It is that a book asks to be put down and picked up again, and the second time you open it you are supposed to remember who everybody was.
So the size of the chapter matters more than the size of the book. Pinocchio runs to thirty-nine thousand words, which sounds impossible at this level, and then you look at it properly: thirty-six chapters of about a thousand words each. Every sitting is the length of one short story, the length you are already comfortable with. Only the number of them is new.
That is the whole step from the shelf below, and it is the last one before novels.
Complete original texts, not graded readers. This is the real Pinocchio of 1883, in which the puppet kills the Talking Cricket with a hammer in chapter four and is hanged from an oak tree in chapter fifteen. Nothing has been shortened or softened. Tap any word while you read to look it up.
3 books, 51 chapters
Shortest first. About 75,379 words in all, and no chapter longer than a short story.
Questions
What makes a book easy for an English learner?
Two different things, and they are often confused. One is the language: short sentences and everyday words. The other is the shape: how much you have to hold in your head at once. These three books are easy in both senses, and the second is what this shelf is really for. Pinocchio has thirty-six chapters of about a thousand words each, so no single sitting is longer than a short story.
Are these simplified versions?
No. Every book here is the complete original text, out of copyright and hosted by readClassicly. This is the real Pinocchio of 1883, not the film and not a graded reader. You can tap any word while you read to look it up.
Which one should I start with?
The King of the Golden River. It is five chapters and about nine thousand words, which is the shortest whole book on the site, and it can be finished in an afternoon. Pinocchio is the longest of the three but has the shortest chapters.
What should I read before this shelf?
The long tales one rung below, at A2. Those are single stories of four to ten thousand words that no longer fit into one sitting. This shelf is the same idea with a table of contents.
Where this shelf sits
This is the fourth rung, and the last one before novels. Below it are long tales that are still single stories; above it are whole novels, unsimplified.
About 50,000 words of reading at this level is where words start repeating often enough to stick. That is a floor rather than a limit: its 1 shelves hold 75,379, and reading all of them is a perfectly good idea.
Short novels: a real novel, unsimplified, short enough to finish. It is open whenever you are ready.
Go up to Short novels