What reading level is my child?

Answer two quick questions and find the book format that fits your child right now — from all-pictures to confident reader.

Reading levels by age: a practical guide

Publishers use many labels — board book, picture book, leveled reader, early chapter book — but for reading together at home, what matters is simpler: how much text fits your child's attention, and who's doing the reading.

The five stages we use

• Alphabet book (0–2): one page per letter, one joyful word each. The goal is sounds and pointing, not plot.
• First words (0–2): a picture story told in 1–4 word labels — "A red boat!". Perfect for naming games.
• Little listener (2–4): one short sentence per page, with rhythm and a refrain they can finish for you.
• Early reader (5–6): two to three short sentences per page — enough story for a real adventure, short enough for a new reader to try a line themselves.
• Confident reader (7–9): a short paragraph per page, richer vocabulary, feelings and humor.

Age is a starting point, not a rule

Children move through these stages at wildly different speeds — and that's fine. A four-year-old who loves being read to may adore early-reader stories; a seven-year-old learning a second language may want simpler text in that language while reading fluently in the first. In bilingual families it's completely normal for the two languages to sit at different levels. Choose the level that fits the language you'll read in, not the child's age on paper.

The bilingual advantage

A personalized bilingual book lets you read the same story at two levels at once: the stronger language carries the plot, the heritage language gets heard, page after page. That's exactly what Favola makes — the same fable, written natively in each language, never machine-translated.