Graded readers in Dutch: what they are, which exist, how to use them

What a graded reader is

Three limits make a book a graded reader. The words come from a list of what a learner at that level knows, and a word outside the list is avoided or explained. The grammar stays inside the level: a book for beginners keeps to the present and the simple past and to one clause at a time, and the sub-clauses, the passive and the past perfect come in at the higher levels. And it is a whole story with a beginning and an end, short enough to finish: a graded reader for beginners is a few thousand words, not a novel.

The idea goes back to the 1920s and 1930s, when Michael West wrote simplified readers for learners of English (the New Method Readers, published by Longmans). English publishers have graded their readers ever since, and Oxford, Cambridge, Penguin and others now sell whole libraries of them. For Dutch there are a handful of series, listed below.

A graded reader is not a children's book, which is written for a child who already knows thousands of words, and not a bilingual book with the English on the facing page, where most learners end up reading the English. Dutch books for beginners explains why children's books are harder than they look.

Headwords, stages and CEFR levels

English graded readers are graded by headwords: the number of base words a level uses, where walk, walks, walked and walking count as one. The Extensive Reading Foundation keeps a scale that runs from about 50 headwords for the first books to 18,000 for near-native reading, in five levels with three sub-levels each, and places every major publisher's series on it. The publishers also give a CEFR level per stage, which is what a Dutch learner can use for comparison. Oxford's Bookworms Library, the best documented series, grades like this:

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Dutch readers do not count headwords. The level on the cover is a CEFR label (A1, A2, B1), and each publisher decides for itself what that label means. The texts and books on this site are checked against frequency lists: at least 90 percent of the words of an A1 text are among the 1,000 most common Dutch words or the everyday basics every course teaches, 2,000 at A2 and 4,000 at B1, and every word outside the list is explained on the spot. A headword is a word family and a frequency list counts words, so the two measures are not the same thing: compare Dutch and English readers by their CEFR label.

The CEFR itself describes what a reader can do at each level. At A2: “short, simple stories” in “high frequency everyday language”. At B1: “the plot of stories, simple novels and comics with a clear linear storyline and high frequency everyday language, given regular use of a dictionary”. A graded reader at A2 or B1 is a book built to that description. The Dutch levels explained has the levels in full.

What the research says

Graded readers exist because of one finding: reading a lot of text you can almost fully understand builds vocabulary and reading speed, and a text with too many unknown words builds neither. Hu and Nation (2000) gave learners of English a story in versions with 80, 90, 95 and 100 percent known words; at 80 percent nobody understood it well, and the authors estimated that reading fiction for pleasure takes about 98 percent known words, one unknown word in fifty. Later studies put the minimum at 95 percent and found a steady climb rather than a sharp cutoff, and a 2023 replication could not fully confirm the original figures; the practical point stands, because a learner at A2 cannot get to 95 percent in a book written for Dutch adults and can in a book written for A2. How to learn Dutch by reading has the studies, with links, and the method built on them.

See it in a text: what A1 and A2 look like

The difference between the levels is easier to see than to describe. Here are two passages from the free first chapters on this site, each the opening of a book in the series.

A1, from Roodkapje (Little Red Riding Hood), the first tale of Fairy Tales: the present tense, no sub-clauses, and nine words in ten among the 1,000 most common, the rest explained on the spot.

‘Blijf op het pad,’ zegt haar moeder. ‘Anders val je en breek je de fles.’ “Stay on the path,” says her mother. “Otherwise you will fall and break the bottle.”

A2, from Dracula, chapter 1: the perfect and the simple past, a glossed expression, and three actions in one sentence, which an A2 reader can follow because the story carries them.

Vanochtend heb ik de eigenaar gevraagd: ‘Wie is graaf Dracula?’ De man en zijn vrouw keken elkaar bang aan, sloegen een kruis en zeiden niets meer. This morning I asked the owner: “Who is Count Dracula?” The man and his wife looked at each other in fear, crossed themselves and said nothing more.

Both chapters come with a glossary you tap and five questions with answers, and the Dracula chapter has the book's audio.

Which graded readers exist for Dutch today

The series below are in print in November 2026, with the level each publisher states. The levels are the publishers' own, and nobody checks them for Dutch. Easy Dutch readers compared sets the same series side by side with prices, audio and glossaries, adds the free websites, and says which one to pick.

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What the table cannot hold. Boom, the NT2 publisher behind De opmaat and the Delft method, has no story series of its own: its reading titles are practice books (Samen lezen, from A1 to A2, revised in 2026) and exam trainers, and its shop, nt2.nl, sells the Eenvoudig Communiceren readers. Eenvoudig Communiceren has published books in simple Dutch since the mid-1990s, for Dutch adults who read with difficulty as much as for learners, and Leeslicht is the shelf of readers in nearly every Dutch public library. The Wablieft books are Belgian Dutch, standard Dutch with words and turns you hear in Flanders rather than in Amsterdam; every title has an audiobook, made with the Luisterpunt library, but Luisterpunt may lend them only to people with a reading impairment, so for most learners the books are silent.

For a reader outside the Netherlands: Short Stories in Dutch and the Dutch Readers books are on Amazon in the US, the UK and Europe, and Leeslicht ships from the publisher's web shop. The first chapter of every Dutch Readers book is free on this site, so you can test the level before you buy; the prices and the choice between the series are on Easy Dutch readers compared.

How to use a graded reader

1. Choose below your level for reading, at your level for study. A book you read for the story should have almost no unknown words: one level below yours, or a book you have read before. A book at your level is study: slower, with the glossary, and read twice. The test is the same either way: read the first 100 words and count the words you do not know. More than ten, and the book is a level too high for now. Fewer than five, and it is easy reading, which is exactly what most of your reading should be.
2. Read a lot, not hard. Studies of graded readers in English found that one book read once leaves a learner with only a handful of its new words; the gains come from many books, and from meeting the same words again and again. Two short books at your level beat one hard one.
3. Do not look up every word. The glossary is for the word that blocks the story and for the word that keeps coming back. If you can still say what is happening, read on; the word will come back in a sentence that explains it.
4. Finish the book, then read it again. Finishing is the point of a graded reader: most learners have never read a whole book in Dutch, and the first one changes how the language feels. A second reading a week or a month later is where the words settle, because you know the story and your attention goes to the sentences.
5. Use the audio when there is audio. Listen to a chapter first, then read along; the player on this site can slow the recording down. Most printed Dutch readers have no audio, so plan to read some books silently too, at your own speed.
6. Keep a few words, not a list. Five words per chapter, written in the sentence you found them in. The rest will come back in the next book.

Read next

Start with a free first chapter at your level today; if it reads well, the book is the next step.

• A1: Roodkapje, the first tale of Fairy Tales, free with a glossary and questions.
• A2: Dracula, chapter 1 and Alice in Wonderland, chapter 1, free with audio, a glossary and questions; then the books Dracula, Alice in Wonderland and Saïdjah and Adinda, whose free first chapter is Saïdjah en de buffel.
• B1: the Leeslicht titles marked B1, from the library, the free B1 texts on this site, and then the book Frankenstein.
• Not sure of your level: the free level test takes about ten minutes, and the free texts are sorted by level.