Which Italian graded readers are really A1, A2 and B1?
The two popular “for beginners” Italian story books, by Olly Richards and Lingo Mastery, start at A2, not A1. For true A1, Alma’s Italiano Facile has A1 readers written in 500 words, and ELI has A1 readers in 200 to 600 words. Cideb’s Italian graded readers start at A2.
Which Italian graded readers are A1, A2 and B1?
This list goes by the levels the publishers give, checked on 31 October 2026. A series appears under every level it covers.
- A1: Alma Italiano Facile at A1 (500 words) and A1–A2 (1,000 words). ELI at A1 (200 to 600 words); check the age group, since ELI splits its readers into series for children, teenagers and adults. Edilingua Primiracconti at A1/A2, plus Furto a scuola (A1/A1+) in its series for teenagers.
- A2: Alma Italiano Facile at A2 (1,500 words). ELI at A2 (mostly 800 words). Cideb Imparare leggendo, level 1. Edilingua Primiracconti at A2/B1. Olly Richards’ Short Stories in Italian for Beginners, volumes 1 and 2 (A2–B1), and Lingo Mastery’s Italian Short Stories for Beginners (A2+).
- B1: Alma Italiano Facile at B1 (2,000 words) and B1–B2 (2,500 words). Cideb Imparare leggendo, level 2. Edilingua Primiracconti at B1/B2. Olly Richards’ Short Stories in Italian for Intermediate Learners (B1–B2). ELI’s range stops at B1.
If you have never studied Italian, none of the “for beginners” story books is the place to start. They are written for learners who already know the basics. Start with an A1 title from Alma or ELI, or with a beginners’ course.
Italian graded readers by level: what the publishers say
The word on the cover and the level in the publisher’s description are often different. “Beginners” in a title usually means someone who has finished a first course. The table lists the levels as each publisher or author states them.
| Series or book | What it is | CEFR levels stated | Words per level stated | Where the level is stated |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Italiano Facile Alma Edizioni | Original stories for adults, with exercises and an audio version | A1, A1–A2, A2, B1, B1–B2 | 500, 1,000, 1,500, 2,000, 2,500 | Publisher’s product pages |
| Letture graduate ELI | Three series by age: children, teenagers, adults; original stories, retold classics and non-fiction | Pre-A1 to B1 | Pre-A1: 100; A1: 200 to 600; A2: mostly 800 | Publisher’s catalogue |
| Imparare leggendo Black Cat–Cideb | Graded readers for young adults and adults | A2, B1, B2, C1 (levels 1 to 4) | Not stated | Publisher’s site |
| Primiracconti Edilingua | Original stories for young adults and adults, with activities and audio | A1/A2, A2/B1, B1/B2, C1/C2, by title | Not stated | Publisher’s catalogue |
| Primiracconti per ragazzi Edilingua | Three illustrated stories for teenagers | A1/A1+, A2/A2+, B1 | Not stated | Publisher’s catalogue |
| Short Stories in Italian for Beginners, volumes 1 and 2 Olly Richards, Teach Yourself | Eight original short stories in volume 1 | A2–B1 | Controlled language that includes the 1,000 most frequent words | Publisher’s description (volume 1); author’s site (both volumes) |
| Short Stories in Italian for Intermediate Learners Olly Richards, Teach Yourself | Longer stories | B1–B2 | Not stated | Author’s site |
| Italian Short Stories for Beginners Lingo Mastery | 20 short stories with a summary and key vocabulary after each | A2+ | Not stated | Publisher’s site |
| Easy Readers sold in Germany by Klett | Classics and modern novels, abridged and simplified | A1–B1 | Not stated | Klett’s Italian reading curriculum |
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. Distributors in other countries sometimes print their own level labels for the same books, so if two shops disagree, trust the publisher’s page. The way to know whether a book fits you is a page of the book itself: how to check an Italian reader in two minutes.
What level is Alma’s Italiano Facile?
A1 to B1–B2. Alma Edizioni, a Florence publisher of Italian for foreigners, grades the Italiano Facile series in five levels and prints the size of the word list on each book. The level lines on the titles we checked:
| Level | Words | Example title |
|---|---|---|
| A1 | 500 | Pasta per due |
| A1–A2 | 1,000 | La rossa |
| A2 | 1,500 | Le magiche ricette di Matilda |
| B1 | 2,000 | Linea A |
| B1–B2 | 2,500 | Dolce vita |
Of the series on this page, this one gives the clearest answer to “is it really A1?”: a level and a word count on each title we checked. Alma also publishes collections of very short stories (the STORIE books) and Italian in comics, which are outside this table.
What level are ELI’s Italian graded readers?
Pre-A1 to B1. ELI, an Italian publisher that also makes graded readers in English, sorts its Italian graded readers into three series by age, for children, teenagers and adults, and labels each title with a level and the number of words it uses. In its catalogue:
- Pre-A1: 100 words, for example the Nonna Rosa books for children.
- A1: 200 words for the youngest readers, 300 words for Zio Piero e i suricati (A1.1), and 600 words for Furto a Venezia.
- A2: 800 words for most titles, among them Il fantasma di Ponte Sisto and retold classics such as Le avventure di Pinocchio, La coscienza di Zeno and I Fioretti di San Francesco.
Check which series a title belongs to before you buy. A book from the children’s series can still be good practice for an adult at A1, but expect young characters and simple topics.
Does Cideb have Italian readers at A1?
No. Black Cat–Cideb describes its Imparare leggendo series as having four levels: level 1 is A2, level 2 is B1, level 3 is B2 and level 4 is C1. On 31 October 2026 its Italian catalogue listed 11 graded readers at A2, some of them guides to Italian cities and regions, and 13 at B1, such as Baci da Venezia and Delitto in Piazza del Campo.
What level are Edilingua’s Primiracconti?
A1/A2 to C1/C2, by title. Edilingua, the publisher of the Progetto italiano course, gives each Primiracconti book a two-level band rather than a single level:
- A1/A2: Dieci racconti, Traffico in centro, Mistero in via dei tulipani.
- A2/B1: Un giorno diverso, Il manoscritto di Giotto, Lo straniero.
- B1/B2: Undici racconti, L’eredità, Ritorno alle origini.
- C1/C2: Il sosia.
A separate series for teenagers, Primiracconti per ragazzi, has three titles: Furto a scuola (A1/A1+), Gli strani ospiti (A2/A2+) and Un’avventura indimenticabile (B1). Edilingua does not state the size of the word list for either series, so an A1/A2 band tells you less than Alma’s “A1, 500 words”.
What level is Olly Richards’ Short Stories in Italian for Beginners?
A2–B1, by the publisher’s own description. Teach Yourself, a Hachette imprint, says the book is written for students “from beginner to intermediate level”, with eight stories in language controlled to a level that includes the 1,000 most frequent words. The author’s site lists a second beginners’ volume, also A2–B1, and an intermediate book at B1–B2.
Lingo Mastery’s Italian Short Stories for Beginners aims at almost the same reader: 20 stories, recommended for A2+, each followed by a summary and a list of key vocabulary. Twenty stories in one book means shorter stories on average; eight means longer ones. Neither publisher gives a word count per story on the pages we checked.
The same comparison for the Spanish books, with Paco Ardit and the Lola Lago series, is on Which Spanish graded readers are really A1, A2 and B1?
Are there Penguin Readers or Oxford Bookworms in Italian?
No. Penguin Readers, Oxford Bookworms, Cambridge English Readers and Macmillan Readers are series for learners of English. How their levels match CEFR is on What are graded readers? For Italian, use the Italian publishers above or free texts.
Free Italian books at A2 and B1
The graded readers above are paid. Free Italian reading for beginners is scarce. Lingua.com has 184 Italian reading texts, of which 42 are free: 1 at A1, 16 at A2, 19 at B1 and 6 at B2; the rest need a Premium account.
Our table of free books by level has 192 public-domain books in five languages. Its two easiest Italian books are these. They are not modern graded readers, and the levels were set by our team.
| Book | Our level | Words | Different word forms | What it is |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| First Italian Readings edited by Benjamin L. Bowen, 1897 | A2 | 44,738 | 12,136 | A school reader for English-speaking beginners: 15 stories and sketches, from Il gatto cogli stivali and Cenerentola to De Amicis, with notes and an Italian–English vocabulary |
| Le avventure di Pinocchio Carlo Collodi | B1 | 41,398 | 5,998 | The original children’s novel |
Two warnings about these numbers. The count for First Italian Readings includes its English preface and the Italian–English vocabulary at the back, so it overstates how much Italian the stories use. And different word forms are not the same measure as a publisher’s word list: every Italian verb has many forms, so parla and parlava count as two. Even so, the gap is wide. ELI retells Pinocchio at A2 in 800 words; Collodi’s original has 5,998 different word forms. That is why a graded reader usually comes first and the original after it.
All the Italian books in our table, with reading times, are on Which books should you read to learn Italian? Free Italian story collections are on Free short stories in Italian, and easy news and other free texts on Free graded readers in Italian.
How we counted. Words and different words were counted from the text of each Project Gutenberg edition, in reading order, without the Gutenberg licence. A word is any run of letters, including accented letters; different words are distinct word forms, ignoring capital letters. The CEFR levels of the free 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.
How to check an Italian 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). If you stop more often than that, go one level down, whatever the cover says. The full test, with the research behind it, is on Is this book right for my level?
Sources
- Alma Edizioni. Italiano Facile product pages: Pasta per due, La rossa, Le magiche ricette di Matilda, Linea A, Dolce vita, checked 31 October 2026. Pasta per due, La rossa, Le magiche ricette di Matilda, Linea A, Dolce vita
- ELI (ILS ELI Edizioni). Letture graduate catalogue, with level and word count per title, checked 31 October 2026. ilseliedizioni.it
- Black Cat–Cideb. About us (levels of Imparare leggendo) and the Italian graded readers at A2 and B1, checked 31 October 2026. blackcat-cideb.com
- Edilingua. Collana Primiracconti and Collana Primiracconti per ragazzi, checked 31 October 2026. Primiracconti, Primiracconti per ragazzi
- Hachette. Short Stories in Italian for Beginners by Olly Richards, Teach Yourself, publisher’s description, checked 31 October 2026. hachette.co.uk
- StoryLearning. Books: Italian, with levels, checked 31 October 2026. storylearning.com/books
- Lingo Mastery. Italian Short Stories for Beginners, checked 31 October 2026. lingomastery.com
- Klett Sprachen. Literatur lesen lernen: unser Angebot für Ihr Lesecurriculum (Italian), PDF, checked 31 October 2026. klett-sprachen.de
- Lingua.com. Italian reading texts by level, checked 31 October 2026. lingua.com
- Project Gutenberg. First Italian Readings, ed. B. L. Bowen (D. C. Heath, 1897), eBook 24072, and Le avventure di Pinocchio by Carlo Collodi, eBook 52484. First Italian Readings, Pinocchio
- 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. (n.d.). Extensive Reading and Graded Readers. Extensive Reading Foundation booklet. erfoundation.org
Back to the overview: What are graded readers, and which series should you read?