Which Spanish graded readers are really A1, A2 and B1?
Two popular Spanish short story books “for beginners” start at A2, not A1: Olly Richards’ Short Stories in Spanish for Beginners is A2–B1 by its publisher, and Lingo Mastery recommends its beginners’ book for A2+. A1 titles exist in Paco Ardit’s Spanish Novels and in Difusión’s Lola Lago detective series, which runs from A1 to B1; Easy Spanish Reader has no CEFR level at all.
Spanish graded readers by level: what the publishers say
The level on the cover and the level in the publisher’s description are often different. “Beginner” in a title usually means someone who has finished a first course, not someone on day one. The table lists the levels as each publisher or author states them.
| Series or book | What it is | Word on the cover | CEFR level stated | Where the level is stated |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Short Stories in Spanish for Beginners, volumes 1 and 2 Olly Richards, Teach Yourself | Eight original short stories in each volume | Beginners | A2–B1 | Publisher’s description (volume 1); author’s site (both volumes) |
| Short Stories in Spanish for Intermediate Learners Olly Richards, Teach Yourself | Eight longer stories | Intermediate | B1–B2 | Author’s site |
| Spanish Short Stories for Beginners Lingo Mastery | 20 short stories | Beginners | A2+ | Publisher’s site |
| Spanish Novels series Paco Ardit | Short novels, each title labelled with a level; the A2 group has five titles | Beginners (A1), Pre-intermediates (A2), Intermediates (B1) and up | A1, A2, B1 and higher, by title | The author’s own labels, on his site and on titles and bundles; the books come out under the Spanish Novels brand (Learning Enlightened Inc.), not through an outside publisher |
| Lola Lago, detective Difusión | Short detective novels | Level on each book | A1 to B1, by title (see below) | Publisher’s catalogue |
| Lola Lago & Asociados Difusión | The newer series with the same detective | Level on each book | A1 and A2, by title (see below) | Publisher’s catalogue |
| Easy Spanish Reader William T. Tardy, McGraw Hill | One book in three parts of rising difficulty | Easy | None; “brand-new beginner” to “advanced-beginning learner” | Publisher’s description |
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. The way to know whether one fits you is a page of the book itself: how to check a Spanish reader in two minutes.
What level is Olly Richards’ Short Stories in Spanish for Beginners?
A2–B1, by the publisher’s own description: it is “for beginners” in the sense of learners who already know the basics, not for someone who has never studied Spanish. The same description says the book was written for students “from beginner to intermediate level”. The book has eight stories, and its language is controlled to a level that includes the 1,000 most frequent words. A second beginners’ volume is also A2–B1, and the intermediate book is B1–B2.
If you are at A1, start lower: the A1 titles in Paco Ardit’s series or the A1 Lola Lago books below, or the free beginner texts on Free graded readers in Spanish.
Lingo Mastery or Olly Richards?
On paper the two beginners’ books aim at almost the same reader. The differences you can check before buying:
| Olly Richards, Short Stories in Spanish for Beginners | Lingo Mastery, Spanish Short Stories for Beginners | |
|---|---|---|
| Stated level | A2–B1 | A2+ |
| Stories | 8 | 20 |
| Vocabulary | Controlled, including the 1,000 most frequent words; a glossary and a bilingual word list | No frequency list stated; a list of the key vocabulary after each story |
| Next step in the same series | A second beginners’ volume (A2–B1) and an intermediate volume (B1–B2) | A second beginners’ volume, also 20 stories, with no CEFR level on its page |
Twenty stories in one book means shorter stories on average; eight means longer ones. Which suits you depends on whether you want quick wins or a story to follow for an evening. Neither publisher gives a word count per story on the pages we checked, so we do not compare length in words.
Are Paco Ardit’s books really A2?
The A2 labels are the author’s own. Paco Ardit’s Spanish Novels are short novels, each sold with a level in its title or bundle: the A2 group, “for pre-intermediates”, has five titles: Laura no está, Porteño Stand-up, Un Yankee en Buenos Aires, Pasaje de ida and El Hacker. The A1 group also has five. The author’s site names the tenses each bundle uses (present, past and future for A1 and A2) and describes what reading at each level feels like, but we found no word list or detailed syllabus behind the labels, so there is nothing to check them against except the books themselves.
That does not mean the label is wrong. It means the one-page test matters more here than for a publisher series with a published syllabus. Read the free sample of the book you are considering and count the unknown words on one page.
What level is Lola Lago?
Difusión, the Spanish publisher, gives each title its own level, so the series covers A1 to B1. The levels of the titles we checked in Difusión’s online catalogue:
| Title | Series | Level |
|---|---|---|
| Vacaciones al sol | Lola Lago, detective | A1 |
| Sin noticias | Lola Lago & Asociados | A1 |
| Enredados | Lola Lago & Asociados | A1 |
| Una nota falsa | Lola Lago, detective | A2 |
| Poderoso caballero | Lola Lago, detective | A2 |
| Por amor al arte | Lola Lago, detective | A2 |
| Amor en línea | Lola Lago & Asociados | A2 |
| La herencia | Lola Lago & Asociados | A2 |
| Caso cerrado | Lola Lago & Asociados | A2 |
| La llamada de La Habana | Lola Lago, detective | A2–B1 |
| Lejos de casa | Lola Lago, detective | A2–B1 |
| ¿Eres tú, María? | Lola Lago, detective | B1 |
The list covers the seven Lola Lago, detective titles that Difusión’s US distributor, Klett World Languages, lists for the series, and the five Lola Lago & Asociados titles we found; there may be more in the newer series. Distributors in other countries sometimes use their own level scales for the same books.
What level is Easy Spanish Reader?
It has no CEFR level. McGraw Hill’s description of the Premium Fourth Edition (2020) is addressed to anyone from “a brand-new beginner” to “an advanced-beginning learner”, with readings of rising difficulty in three parts: a story about two high-school students and their Spanish club, episodes from the history of Mexico, and an abridged version of the classic Lazarillo de Tormes. The description of the previous, third edition put it more broadly, from “raw beginners to intermediate-level” learners.
So the book does not have one level: the first pages are for beginners and the last part is a classic retold. Any CEFR level for it would be a guess from the publisher’s words, not a level anyone has published or tested. If the first part feels easy, test a page from Part III before deciding the whole book is too easy.
Are there Penguin Readers in Spanish?
No. Penguin Readers is a series for students of English as a foreign language. The same is true of Oxford Bookworms, Cambridge English Readers and Macmillan Readers. Their level systems are compared on What are graded readers? For Spanish, use the series above, a Spanish publisher’s graded readers, or free texts.
Free Spanish books at A2 and B1
The graded readers above are paid. Our table of free books by level has 117 public-domain books in five languages, and these are its Spanish books at A2 and B1. They are not graded readers: apart from Lecturas fáciles con ejercicios, an old school reader with exercises, they are originals written for Spanish readers, with the level set by our team. Every title links to a free edition on Project Gutenberg.
| Book | Form | Level | Words | Different words | Reading time |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Fábulas literariasTomás de Iriarte | fables in verse | A2 | 14,714 | 3,959 | 1–2.5 h |
| Lecturas fáciles con ejerciciosLawrence A. Wilkins | reader for learners | A2 | 61,857 | 11,961 | 5–10 h |
| Cuentos de amor, de locura y de muerteHoracio Quiroga | short stories | B1 | 49,907 | 8,186 | 4–8.5 h |
| Pepita JiménezJuan Valera | novel | B1 | 56,657 | 9,438 | 4.5–9.5 h |
| Cuentos de amorEmilia Pardo Bazán | short stories | B1 | 64,095 | 12,491 | 5.5–11 h |
| Dafnis y Cloe; Leyendas del antiguo OrienteJuan Valera | novel and legends | B1 | 77,281 | 12,569 | 6.5–13 h |
| Doña PerfectaBenito Pérez Galdós | novel | B1 | 113,704 | 20,845 | 9.5–19 h |
Compare these numbers with the beginners’ books above. Olly Richards’ book is controlled to a level that includes the 1,000 most frequent words; the shorter of our two Spanish A2 books, Tomás de Iriarte’s Fábulas literarias, has 3,959 different word forms in 14,714 words. Word forms and a word list are not the same measure, since every Spanish verb has many forms, but the gap is wide. That is why a graded reader usually comes first and an original like Horacio Quiroga’s stories comes after it.
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 habla and hablaba 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 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.
Old school readers and graded texts in Spanish that are free online, such as the Instituto Cervantes’ Lecturas paso a paso, are listed on Free graded readers in Spanish.
How to check a Spanish 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. The full test, with the research behind it, is on Is this book right for my level?
Sources
- Hachette. Short Stories in Spanish for Beginners by Olly Richards, Teach Yourself, publisher’s description, checked 7 October 2026. hachetteindia.com, hachette.co.uk
- StoryLearning. Books: Spanish, with levels, checked 7 October 2026. storylearning.com/books
- Lingo Mastery. Spanish Short Stories for Beginners and Vol. 2, checked 7 October 2026. volume 1, volume 2
- Paco Ardit. Spanish Novels: home page with the bundles by level, and the lists of A1 and A2 titles, checked 7 October 2026. spanishnovels.net, A1 titles, A2 titles
- Difusión. Catalogue pages for the Lola Lago, detective and Lola Lago & Asociados titles, one page per title (for example Vacaciones al sol, ¿Eres tú, María?), checked 7 October 2026.
- McGraw Hill (2020). Easy Spanish Reader, Premium Fourth Edition, by William T. Tardy, ISBN 9781260463606, publisher’s description. The product page on mheducation.com showed no description on 7 October 2026; the description was read in the Porchlight Book Company listing. The third edition’s description: Goodreads.
- Penguin Random House (2019). Penguin Readers Handbook. penguinreaders.co.uk
- 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
Back to the overview: What are graded readers, and which series should you read?