Are children’s books a good way to start reading in a foreign language?
Not always: books written for native-speaker children are not graded, and in a study of 688 texts, you needed a vocabulary of about 10,000 words, plus names and so-called marginal words, to know 98% of the words in children’s books, as in books for adults, but only about 3,000 word families, plus the same extras, for texts written for language learners. Start with graded readers and treat children’s books as the next step, not the first.
Are children’s books easier than graded readers?
No, not in vocabulary. Graded readers are written to a word list for each level; books for native-speaker children are written for children who already speak the language and know thousands of words. Stuart Webb and John Macalister tested how much difference that makes. They analysed 688 texts in three groups: texts written for children, texts for language learners, and texts for older readers. To know 98% of the words, the share of known words Hu and Nation’s study of reading fiction pointed to, a reader of the children’s texts needed a vocabulary of about 10,000 words plus names and so-called marginal words. The texts for older readers needed the same. The texts for language learners needed about 3,000 word families plus the same extras.
Their conclusion, in the words of the abstract: texts for children and texts for older readers carry a similar lexical load, and “neither of these text types is as well suited as graded readers” for extensive reading in a second language. For comparison, Paul Nation’s count for ordinary adult novels is 8,000 to 9,000 word families for 98%, plus names.
Children’s books do have one point in their favour. In the same study, words from the 3rd to 14th of Paul Nation’s 1,000-word frequency lists, beyond the most common 2,000, were repeated most often in texts for learners, then in texts for children, and least often in texts for older readers. Repetition is what makes words stick, so children’s books give a little more of it than adult books, while still asking for an adult-sized vocabulary.
The authors came back to the question in 2019. The gap between the top graded readers and unsimplified books, they wrote, can be as wide as 5,000 word families. They looked for a short list of words frequent in writing for children and found 245 word families that provided almost 3.4% coverage for learners who already know 2,000 word families. On a page of 250 words, 3.4% is about eight words. Their conclusion is that, with such a list, children’s literature can be used in the English as a foreign language classroom.
So children’s books sit between graded readers and adult originals, closer to the originals. That is how Graded readers or original books? places them too: one of several kinds of books between the two.
Why do children’s books have so many words you don’t know?
Three reasons come up again and again: the vocabulary of a child’s world, dialect and everyday speech, and wordplay. Each is easy to see in real books.
- A child’s world has its own words. Fairy tales are full of huntsmen, dwarfs, tailors and peasants; animal stories need the names of birds and insects. Language courses for adults rarely teach these words. Our counts show it: the words Grimms’ Fairy Tales uses most often outside the 2,000 most common word forms of our English books include tailor, dwarf, huntsman and peasant. In La Fontaine’s fables they include cigogne (stork), hirondelle (swallow) and frelons (hornets).
- Dialect and everyday speech. Writers for children often let characters talk the way people really talk. Some of the tales in the Grimms’ Deutsche Märchen are in Low German, not standard German: Der Hase und der Igel opens with “Disse Geschicht is lögenhaft so vertellen”. In our count, the three words the book uses most often outside common German are wöör (63 times), güng (55) and awerst (41), Low German for war, ging and aber. In Erich Kästner’s Emil und die Detektive, the Berlin children speak their city’s everyday German; in Elvira Lindo’s Manolito Gafotas, an eight-year-old from Carabanchel Alto in Madrid coins phrases such as “el mundo mundial” and “la verdad verdadera”.
- Wordplay. Jokes built on sound are the hardest thing to read in a foreign language. In Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, the Mock Turtle’s school taught “Reeling and Writhing” and “Uglification”: you have to know reading, writing and multiplication to get the joke, and a dictionary will not help.
Rhyme adds a fourth problem in verse for children. To fit the metre, poets bend word order and spelling: La Fontaine writes encor for encore, and Der Struwwelpeter, a book of rhymes for small children, uses words such as lichterloh (ablaze) that adult learners almost never meet.
Are picture books easier for beginners?
Shorter, yes; easier, not always. A picture book has few words, and the pictures carry part of the meaning, so a few unknown words on a page matter less than in a novel. That makes picture books useful in the first weeks, when any complete text is an achievement. The words themselves are still a young child’s: animal noises, nursery words, rhymes. Der Struwwelpeter is a good example. It is subtitled as funny stories and pictures for children aged 3 to 6, yet our team set it at B1: 2,988 words in rhymed verse, with 1,115 different word forms.
Picture books written for beginning readers, with controlled language, are closer to graded readers. StoryWeaver, a free library of openly licensed children’s stories in four reading levels, is listed with other free sources on Where to find free graded readers.
Which children’s classics are free?
Many children’s classics are old enough to be in the public domain in the United States and are free on Project Gutenberg; check the law in your country. These seven are in our table of free books by level. Each title links to the book’s page, with its reading time and a link to the free edition.
| Book | Language | Level | Words | Different word forms | What makes it harder |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Grimms’ Fairy Tales Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm, in English translation | English | B1 | 101,611 | 4,854 | Fairy-tale words: tailor, dwarf, huntsman, peasant |
| Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland Lewis Carroll | English | B2 | 26,775 | 2,634 | Puns, nonsense verse and Victorian words such as queer and croquet |
| Der Struwwelpeter Heinrich Hoffmann | German | B1 | 2,988 | 1,115 | Rhymed verse; words such as lichterloh |
| Deutsche Märchen Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm | German | B2 | 88,762 | 8,882 | Some tales in Low German: wöör, güng, awerst |
| Le avventure di Pinocchio Carlo Collodi | Italian | B1 | 41,398 | 5,998 | Old and everyday words: zecchini (gold coins), ciuchino (little donkey), burattinaio (puppet master) |
| I Robinson italiani Emilio Salgari | Italian | B2 | 67,116 | 9,732 | Adventure at sea: naufraghi (castaways), scogliere (reefs), frangenti (breakers) |
| Fables de La Fontaine, Tome premier Jean de La Fontaine | French | C1 | 6,910 | 1,962 | Verse fables; animal names and poetic spellings such as encor |
None of the seven is a beginner’s book. If you are at A2, read graded readers or the school readers on Free short stories for beginners first, and come back to these at B1. The fairy tales are the gentlest start among them: each tale is short, the plots are familiar, and the same words come back from tale to tale.
How we counted. Words and different word forms were counted from the text of each free edition, without the Project Gutenberg header and licence; different word forms ignore capital letters, so Ging and ging count as one, but each inflected form counts separately, so ging and gingen count as two. The words in the last column come from the same count. The CEFR levels were set by hand by our team, as explained on the About page.
Emil und die Detektive and Manolito Gafotas are not in the table: both are still in copyright in their home countries, and our table lists only public-domain books.
Are there simplified editions of children’s classics?
Yes, and for a learner below B1 they are usually the better way in. Graded reader publishers retell children’s classics in a limited vocabulary, as they do adult classics. Emil und die Detektive, for example, is published by Klett in its Easy Readers series for learners of German as a simplified edition at A2. A retelling keeps the plot and loses the author’s style, and it is much shorter than the original; how much shorter is measured on How much of the original book do adapted classics keep?
A sensible order is the simplified edition first and the original a level or two later. By then you know the story, which makes the original easier to follow when the words run out.
Will an adult get bored reading children’s books?
It depends on the book, not on the age it was written for. Three things keep adult learners reading children’s books, and three make them stop.
- Why adults keep reading: stories they already know, such as the Grimms’ tales or Pinocchio, which help when the words run out; short length, since Der Struwwelpeter takes 15 to 30 minutes at 200 and 100 words a minute; and humour that works at any age, like Manolito’s voice or Carroll’s nonsense.
- Why adults stop: topics made for children, a moral lesson on every page (the Struwwelpeter rhymes are drastic cautionary tales), and a narrator’s voice pitched at a young child.
The rule of extensive reading applies here too: if a book bores you, stop and pick another. Reading a lot of easy text works only if you keep reading, and that depends on wanting to know what happens next. Why reading a lot works, and how much, is on Does extensive reading work?
If children’s topics put you off, graded readers for adults are written for exactly this gap: adult stories in limited language. The series and their levels are compared on What are graded readers, and which series should you read?
How to check a children’s book before you start
Ignore the age on the cover and test one page. Open the book in the middle, read a full page and count the words you could not translate; names don’t count. On a page of about 250 words, five unknown words means you know about 98% of them, the share Hu and Nation’s study of reading fiction pointed to. For easy reading in quantity, Paul Nation and Rob Waring set the limit at three or four unknown words a page. If a children’s book gives you more, it is too hard for now, whatever age it was written for.
The full test, with the research behind it, is on Is this book right for my level?
Sources
- Webb, S. and Macalister, J. (2013). Is text written for children useful for L2 extensive reading? TESOL Quarterly, 47(2), 300–322; published online in 2012. Abstract checked 1 November 2026. doi.org/10.1002/tesq.70
- Macalister, J. and Webb, S. (2019). Can L1 children’s literature be used in the English language classroom? High frequency words in writing for children. Reading in a Foreign Language, 31(1), 62–80. Abstract checked 1 November 2026. nflrc.hawaii.edu
- Nation, I. S. P. (2006). How large a vocabulary is needed for reading and listening? The Canadian Modern Language Review, 63(1), 59–82. doi.org/10.3138/cmlr.63.1.59
- Hu, M. and Nation, P. (2000). Unknown vocabulary density and reading comprehension. Reading in a Foreign Language, 13(1), 403–430. doi.org/10.64152/10125/66973
- Nation, P. and Waring, R. (2013). Extensive Reading and Graded Readers. erfoundation.org
- Readingcompanion.org (2026). Table of free books by level: levels, words, different word forms and frequent words of each book, counted from the free editions, checked 1 November 2026. readingcompanion.org/books-by-level
- Project Gutenberg (2026). Deutsche Märchen gesammelt durch die Brüder Grimm, edited by M. Thilo-Luyken (1921), eBook 77905, checked 1 November 2026. gutenberg.org
- Project Gutenberg. Der Struwwelpeter by Heinrich Hoffmann, eBook 24571, title page, checked 1 November 2026. gutenberg.org
- TraLaLit (2019). Emil’s Berlin in translation, 13 November 2019, checked 1 November 2026. tralalit.de
- Noticias Taldea Multimedia (NTM), Onda Vasca (2024). Manolito Gafotas cumple 30 años convertido en “cultura popular”, 19 November 2024, checked 1 November 2026. ondavasca.com
- Klett Sprachen. Emil und die Detektive, Easy Readers (DaF), simplified edition, A2, ISBN 978-3-12-675914-4, checked 1 November 2026. klett-sprachen.de