Which French graded readers are really A1, A2 and B1?

Two French story books “for beginners” in English, by Olly Richards and Lingo Mastery, start at A2, not A1. For true A1, use one of the series for learners of French (FLE) that has an A1 level: Hachette’s Lire en français facile, CLE International’s Lectures CLE en français facile, ELI’s Lectures Seniors or Black Cat’s Lire et s’entraîner.

By the Readlang Mobile team (an independent app, not affiliated with readlang.com). Updated 31 October 2026.

French graded readers by level: what the publishers say

“Beginners” on an English-language cover usually means someone who has finished a first course. Publishers’ own series for learners of French as a foreign language (français langue étrangère, FLE) use CEFR labels on every title, and most of them start at A1. The table gives the levels as each publisher or author states them.

Levels in this table are what the publishers and authors say. We have not tested these books with readers, and we do not rate them. Penguin Readers, Oxford Bookworms, Cambridge and Macmillan publish readers for learners of English only; their levels are compared on What are graded readers? The way to know whether a French reader fits you is a page of the book itself: how to check a French reader in two minutes.

What level is Olly Richards’ Short Stories in French for Beginners?

If you are at A1, start lower: an A1 title from one of the FLE series below, or the old school readers listed under free French texts.

Lingo Mastery or Olly Richards for French?

On paper the two beginners’ books aim at almost the same reader. What you can check before buying:

Which French graded readers are really A1?

The A1 titles of the four FLE series. Each publisher labels every title with its own level, so you can pick a book marked A1 rather than a book marked “beginners”:

Even at A1 some of these titles are classics retold: CLE lists La petite Fadette by George Sand at Niveau 1/A1. A classic at A1 is a short retelling of the plot, not the novel with easier words, so do not judge your level by whether you could read the original.

How many words does each ELI level use?

ELI publishes the size of the word list for each level of its French readers, which makes its labels the easiest to compare. The figures are from ELI’s own table of contents for its French series.

Lire en français facile or Lectures CLE: which is which?

Why is the same classic A2 in one series and B1 in another?

Because each publisher writes its own adaptation, to its own word list. A level belongs to an edition, not to the story. Three examples from the publishers’ catalogues:

What level is Easy French Reader?

Any CEFR level for this book would be a guess from the publisher’s words. If Part I feels easy, test a page from Part III before deciding the whole book is too easy. The same book in Spanish is covered on What level is Easy Spanish Reader?

Free French books at A2 and B1

The graded readers above are paid. Our table of free books by level has 192 public-domain books in five languages; these are its French books at A2 and B1. They are not graded readers but originals written for French readers, with the level set by hand by our team. There is no French book at A1 in the table. Every title links to a free edition on Project Gutenberg.

Compare these numbers with the readers above. ELI’s B1 readers are written within a list of 1,000 words, and Olly Richards’ beginners’ book within a level that includes the 1,000 most frequent words. The shortest French A2 book in our table, Perrault’s Riquet à la Houppe, has 617 different word forms in only 2,196 words, and Voltaire’s Candide has 5,485. Word forms and a word list are not the same measure, since every French verb has many forms, but the gap is wide. That is why a graded reader usually comes first and an original such as Maupassant’s stories comes after it. Short originals for beginners in four languages are on Free short stories in French for beginners.

How we counted. Words and different words were counted from the text of each Project Gutenberg edition, in reading order, without the Gutenberg licence and front matter. A word is any run of letters, including accented letters; different words are distinct word forms, ignoring capital letters, so parle and parlait count as two. Reading time is words divided by 200 and by 100 words per minute; where those speeds come from is on How long does it take to read a book? The CEFR levels of our books were set by hand by our team, as explained on the About page. The levels of the graded readers on this page are the publishers'; we did not measure those books.

Where can I find free French graded texts?

Whole free graded books in French are rare. What you will find free are levelled texts, easy news and old school readers that are now in the public domain:

The old readers have none of the CEFR labels of a modern series, and their notes are in English, but they were made for school learners, three of them for beginners, and several have a vocabulary at the back. Free sources for Spanish, German and Italian are on Where to find free graded readers.

How to check a French reader in two minutes

Open the free sample or the book itself in the middle, read one 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 the words, the share that Hu and Nation’s study of reading fiction pointed to (Hu and Nation, 2000); for easy reading in quantity, Nation and Waring set the limit at three or four unknown words a page (Nation and Waring, 2013). If you stop more often than that, go one level down, whatever the cover says, or try another publisher’s edition of the same story. The full test is on Is this book right for my level?

Next: Which Spanish graded readers are really A1, A2 and B1? Back to the overview: What are graded readers, and which series should you read?