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Good books to learn Spanish

If you’ve decided to try learning Spanish through reading, you’re in good hands. It’s a smart strategy – learning Spanish by reading can help you in a lot of ways. But, once you’ve made that decision, what’s next? Where do you find easy to read Spanish books?

We have a few options available to us, but the secret? You can use literally any book that’s written in Spanish. Obviously, if you’re a more experienced Spanish reader, a fairy tale isn’t going to do much for you, but it’s not like there’s a Spanish book that wouldn’t be helpful. Keeping that in mind, let’s talk about where to find good books to learn Spanish.

How to find easy to read Spanish books

Fortunately, Spanish is the second most popular language in the world, meaning it’s even more popular than English! That’s great for us because that means that we don’t have to work hard to find easy to read Spanish books. For example, if you live in a city with a large Spanish-speaking population, you’ll likely find a large section of Spanish books in your public library – easy!

But if nobody around you speaks Spanish, how do you find easy to read Spanish books? Thanks to the internet (and, again, the sheer number of people in this world who speak Spanish), you’ll still find them quite easily. Not only that, but you can even find tons of books that’ll give you English translations right on the same page.

Independent online stores with easy to read Spanish books

For example, there are a variety of online stores that stock these books – some of them are even originals! For example, LanguageLizard.com is a great resource for original bilingual books, and you can even come back to them when you start studying your next language.

Bilingual books are great because they’ll have the English on one side and Spanish on the other, so if you’re having a hard time getting the gist of the Spanish, want to conveniently translate a new Spanish word, or want to learn how the sentence changes when translated into Spanish, all that information is right in front of you. Language Lizard also offers a variety of other language learning resources.

Do be careful with this, though; we don’t read in Spanish just to figure out what it means in English. The point of all this is to get our brains used to thinking in Spanish, so don’t depend too much on the translations.

Kaplan Learning Company also has its own section of easy to read Spanish books. These books are great for true beginners, as they’re created for the youngest readers. So, if you’re still in the first few sections of your Duolingo tree, these books are great for you. Again, these books are bilingual, so you won’t have to keep your dictionary open to understand these new words if the pictures aren’t enough.

If you like that ultimate beginner level of easy to read Spanish books but are interested in more of a challenge, Barefoot Books has a collection of both bilingual and just Spanish books; once you’ve worked your way through some bilingual books, throw yourself at a challenge and see if you can make your way without the English version!

Finally, for those of you with a bit of a limit to your wallet, BulkBookstore.com carries its own variety of easy to read Spanish books at discounted prices. These are also bilingual, which is a great deal for a book that will only cost you a couple of bucks!

Bigger stores that sell easy to read Spanish books

As you can tell, there are quite a few options out there for you to find easy to read Spanish books. However, if you’re like me, you get nervous buying from independent online stores. Whether it’s long shipping times, unknown return policies, or maybe those stores just don’t have what you’re looking for, there is one more obvious answer.

Being the online store that has everything you could possibly desire, Amazon, of course, has an insane variety of easy to read Spanish books. It’s got most books under the sun, both bilingual and straight Spanish, and for those of you who are Prime fans, you can always trust that you’ll get your books soon and you don’t have to worry about return policies.

So now that you know where you can find easy to read Spanish books, what should you be looking for? What are the good books to learn Spanish?

Good books to learn Spanish

Whether or not any book is a good book for you to learn Spanish depends on your reading level, for the most part. However, one book that many will recommend you read is El Principito, or The Little Prince. While this book is at a reading level for those still new to Spanish, that doesn’t mean it has nothing to offer more mature brains.

El Principito is a book that many read multiple times and get something new out of it every time. Therefore, no matter your level El Principito is definitely a good book to learn Spanish.

So once you’re done with that? Finding good books to learn Spanish may take some experimenting for you, or it may not. It all depends on your Spanish reading skill. This is probably different from your English reading level, so you can’t really just go read The Hobbit in Spanish just because it’s something that you’ve been meaning to read. Trust me, that’ll be difficult, frustrating, and really not worth your time.

If you’re an ultimate beginner, you can find good books to learn Spanish just by looking for Spanish fairy tales. These are fairy tales that you are already familiar with, so reading the Spanish version is really just growing your Spanish vocabulary. For example, you can find Cenicienta (Cinderella), El Patito Feo (The Ugly Duckling), Los Tres Cerditos (Three Little Pigs), and most any other fairy tale translated into Spanish.

Once you’ve graduated past this level, good books to learn Spanish for you become more and more advanced level books. If fairy tales are too easy for you, continue on to more elementary-level stories. Try to find the books or series that you loved as a kid in Spanish – those books were probably very popular, and very likely translated into Spanish.

To find good books to learn Spanish, all you really need to do is find good books in English! The popular ones are translated into Spanish to widen their audience and are therefore likely just as easy to find in Spanish if you give it a look.

The importance of finding good books to read in Spanish

There’s more to finding Spanish books to read than just doing it ’cause you can. I mean, reading is great, but I know a lot of us don’t do it consistently in our own language, so we wouldn’t necessarily think to do it in Spanish.

It’s important, though. Without having the ability to read in Spanish, you can never say you’re fluent. If you move to Spain, look at a billboard, and can’t read it, it’s kind of frustrating, and can definitely be a downer. So it’s more than just reading for fun - it’s practicing an important part of the language itself so that you can understand it in all its forms.

Plus, reading can be one of your favorite ways to learn Spanish. At least for me, I don’t have to deal with the social anxiety of speaking with another person, and I can do it on my own time, my own pace, and read the stories I like. Plus, it’s a great way to immerse yourself in the language…without actually immersing yourself.

What are your favorite books to read in Spanish? Or, if you haven’t started, what are some books that you would like to read in Spanish?