The site recommends grader readers, bases on the learner's level, but still, an absolute beginner with struggle painfully.
The Extensive Reading Foundation: http://erfoundation.org/wordpress/
ER Guides: https://erfoundation.org/wordpress/guides/
Extensive Reading Foundation (Promoting Extensive Reading in English as a Foreign Language):
There are four reading types: Reading pain, Intensive reading, Extensive reading, and Speed reading.
Reading pain: Too hard, poor comprehension, with effort, de-motivating, below 90% of know vocabulary.
Intensive reading: Instructional level, can learn new words and grammar, the students know between 90% and 98% of the words on a page.
Extensive reading: Fast, fluent, adequate comprehension, enjoyable, when the students know 98% or more of the words, then they are in the extensive reading "sweet spot."
Reading at the right level.
In order for students to benefit from their Extensive Reading, they should be reading at an appropriate difficulty level and at a good speed (150-200 words per minute or a little lower for beginning students) with a major aim of practicing the skill of reading itself.
Research indicates that if the students know about 98% of the words on a page, then they can read it quickly and with high levels of comprehension. Below 90% (one unknown word in 10), the reading becomes frustrating and slow, requiring a lot of dictionary use and comprehension suffers badly. The reading is at an ‘instructional’ level when the students know between 90% and 98% of the words on a page. At this difficulty level, they will know enough of the surrounding language that they will have adequate comprehension but will still need to look up many words if they wish to understand the text better. If the students know 98% or more of the words, then they are in the extensive reading ‘sweet spot’ and can read quickly enough because there isn’t so much unknown language slowing them down and so they can read enjoyably. If the students know everything, or almost everything, on the page, they can then read it very quickly and can use it to build reading speed and their natural reading ability.
Teachers should match the difficulty of the text with the aim of the reading. Students should read at the Instructional level if they wish to learn new things, or in the reading ‘sweet spot’ when the aim is to build Teachers should match the difficulty of the text with the aim of the reading. Students should read at the Instructional level if they wish to learn new things, or in the reading ‘sweet spot’ when the aim is to build reading speed and fluency. Whether a given text is ‘instructional’ or in the ‘sweet spot’ depends on the ability of the students themselves. Not all students in a class will read at the same level, and so a given text might be very frustrating to a low ability student, but very easy for a high ability student.
An obvious point in the reading definition, if the student does not understand the text, even if the student can phonetically pronounce the words, the student is not reading.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reading
Learning to read (or, reading skills acquisition) is the acquisition and practice of the skills necessary to understand the meaning behind printed words. For a skilled reader, the act of reading feels simple, effortless, and automatic.[58] However, the process of learning to read is complex and builds on cognitive, linguistic, and social skills developed from a very early age. As one of the four core language skills (listening, speaking, reading and writing),[59][60] reading is vital to gaining a command of the written language.