Reading is usually the skill I find comes most naturally when learning a language.

But with German, it’s a different experience: the length and complexity of many words can make reading feel more intimidating than it should.

Storybooks Canada is a project that aims to promote bilingualism and multilingualism in Canada.

It features 40 free stories at A1-B1 level, originally from the African Storybook in many languages, including German.

eReaders are graded readers, available at A1-B1 level on the app. The printed books have more levels available (B2-C1).

The beauty of these books is that many are adapted from classics and biographies (e.g. Sisi, The Life of Johann Sebastian Bach).

An added bonus is that you can have the story read to you, which will improve your listening and pronunciation skills.

Sloeful is a relatively new project that provides free German material.

It has texts for A1-B2 learners, a small selection of stories for A1 learners and fairytales for A2-B1 learners.

All content comes with an audio recording, useful vocabulary and a comprehension quiz. I love their illustrations too!

The Fable Cottage website provides free audio books which recount traditional fairy tales in modern and accessible language.

All of the stories have accompanying transcripts with pictures embedded in the text, and some have whole videos.

You’ll be surprised how you can recognise your target language’s words for things like “ax”, “hood” and “beanstalk” even as a beginner because you simply know the story.

The stories in German Stories for Beginners are one to two pages each, followed by a brief summary of the story, a glossary of key words for each story and some comprehension questions to testing your understanding.

Pitched as “for beginners,” in reality I think these stories are a little hard for A1, and I’d recommend them for A2 learners up for a challenge.

The stories aren’t exactly fascinating, but they include realistic dialogues and day-to-day situations.

Deutsch Perfekt has a variety of clearly labelled articles at different levels, on topics including politics, society, culture, business, sports and more.

Each article includes vocabulary explanations in simplified German, complemented by grammar explanations, exercises and idioms.

You can access this online for free. Follow the steps here. NOTE: Even if you live in Germany, register with a different country, otherwise it asks you to get a library card to access it.

Upwordo Micro Stories is a desktop app that offers free real-world German texts at an intermediate (B1) level, with instant translation and vocabulary lists.

The texts are really short and snappy, so ideal for bitesized learning when you’re short on time. Plus, you can save words for later review and practice.

Young Adult fiction is the perfect way to dip your toes in the deep end and start reading books written for native speakers. The stories are generally uncomplicated and the language used is fairly simply.

Start with Wie du ihm, so ich dir by Beatrix Gurian. It’s a mini-book of 106 pages that will fit into the back pocket of your jeans. The story is stupid, but you’ll feel a real sense of accomplishment for finishing your first “real” book.

It’s rare that I endorse slow versions of natural speech as I find them boring at best, and demotivating at worse, if learners below B1 level give them a try.

I recommend Langsam Gesprochene Nachrichten (“News Spoken Slowly”) from Deutsche Welle as a B2 reading resource first, whereby you can use the audio to improve your pronunciation.

Zeit Wissen is a popular German magazine that focuses on science, technology, society, and culture. It is published every two months by the same company that produces Die ZEIT, one of Germany’s leading weekly newspapers.

The same people also make one of my favourite podcasts: Woher weißt du das?, along with many other podcasts covering different topics, as I mentioned in my 12 high-quality German podcasts to get you from B1 to B2 post.