Nonfiction Spanish Graded Readers?

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haziz
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Nonfiction Spanish Graded Readers?

Postby haziz » Mon Oct 04, 2021 4:08 pm

I find the sappy stories in most graded readers to be particularly irritating. Are there any nonfiction graded readers in Spanish? Biography would also be welcome. I am looking for ones in the A2-B1 range but will happily hear of any at other levels that I can tackle at a later point. Native language nonfiction (or even GOOD native language fiction) that is not too advanced for this particular reader would also work.

I am aware of the set of biographical booklets put out by the Spanish publisher Difusion, covering the biographies of a few artists and writers. Unfortunately their other series entitled "Un día en Madrid/Sevilla/Valencia etc." turns out to be stories about a person in that city rather than a description of the history or features of the city.

I am also aware of Think Spanish magazine and was at one point a subscriber, and do have the one book issued by the editors of the magazine.

Any input, feedback or advice welcome.

Thanks.
Last edited by haziz on Wed Oct 06, 2021 3:28 pm, edited 5 times in total.
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Re: Nonfiction Spanish Graded Readers?

Postby Fuerza » Mon Oct 04, 2021 6:04 pm

Arturo Pelayo has a two-book series consisting of relatively short selections of various non-fiction topics, ranging from science and history to biography. He also has a combined version so you can get both in one book. The name of the book itself escapes me at the moment but you can search his name on Amazon. I’ve read through the book and find it to be of fairly high quality, despite a small number of factual errors here and there (nothing you wouldn’t expect to find in any book, and which in no way detract from the text itself).
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Re: Nonfiction Spanish Graded Readers?

Postby luke » Mon Oct 04, 2021 7:58 pm

Mr. Kraut has some primary and secondary school textbooks from Mexico or one of the other big Latin American countries in his resources thread. These include all subjects so topics like Science and History should be non-fiction.

This may be the link. The books are all free from the government of Mexico:

https://libros.conaliteg.gob.mx/
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Sonjaconjota
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Re: Nonfiction Spanish Graded Readers?

Postby Sonjaconjota » Wed Oct 06, 2021 7:55 am

Long shot, but there is a German magazine similar to Think Spanish.
https://www.ecos-online.de/
It is called Ecos and is published by Zeit Sprachen. (They also have magazines for English, French, German and Italian.)
I say long shot because of course any vocabulary translations and introduction texts are in German, and also because I don't know if it is easy to find outside Europe. Maybe the digital version is accessible even in the USA.
Last edited by Sonjaconjota on Sun Oct 10, 2021 1:39 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Nonfiction Spanish Graded Readers?

Postby Kraut » Wed Oct 06, 2021 10:47 am

Last edited by Kraut on Thu Oct 07, 2021 12:01 am, edited 1 time in total.
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DaveAgain
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Re: Nonfiction Spanish Graded Readers?

Postby DaveAgain » Wed Oct 06, 2021 12:54 pm

Lingua read a series of biographies intended for children, written by Luca Novelli, they seem to be available in Spanish too.

https://www.editex.es/Catalogo/041194fc ... 6caa0489/6
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sirgregory
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Re: Nonfiction Spanish Graded Readers?

Postby sirgregory » Thu Oct 07, 2021 6:14 pm

I have a book from McGraw-Hill called "Easy French Reader." I see they have a very similar Spanish reader available.

It has three parts. The first gives you typical graded reader type stories. The second section is non-fiction and goes over French history and important historical figures. Then the third section has short stories by French authors. It's not quite what you're looking for as it's only 1/3 non-fiction, but I'm mentioning it in case you don't find anything else that suits you.

You might start reading Wikipedia articles in Spanish. Whenever you're looking at an article in English, on the left side it lists versions of the article in other languages. With one click you can open up the corresponding Spanish article. These will not be "graded," but maybe still worth a try.
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Re: Nonfiction Spanish Graded Readers?

Postby Sonjaconjota » Fri Oct 15, 2021 5:30 am

I have just come across this:
https://www.edelsa.es/descubre/
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Re: Nonfiction Spanish Graded Readers?

Postby AllSubNoDub » Fri Oct 15, 2021 3:11 pm

Not exactly non-fiction, but not all sappy love stories, I used the Stories From.../Historias de... bilingual text series to significantly improve my Spanish in the beginning. Genevieve Barlow is only one of the authors, but there are others as well (there's also at least Stories from Puerto Rico, for instance). A lot of culturally relevant myths and legends specific to whatever geographical area you're interested in. It may serve to split up some of the great suggestions here.

When I picked Spanish back up, I read through almost the entire contents of Antimoon in Spanish, with the help of Rememberry. It's all about how two Polish guys managed to learn English to a native level while living in Poland, so I was familiar with and enjoyed the topic (language learning) and I learned a lot (massive input of native content is important). It's written in an easy to understand, casual style. By the way, I have to say that I would never guess Tomasz wasn't a US native judging by these clips, he almost has a Midwest accent or somewhere along the Rust Belt.

Medium en español has tons of short non-fiction blog entries on any topic you can think of. At a B1 you should be able to find something, especially if it's a topic you're familiar with and interested in and use Rememberry/some other point-and-click integrated dictionary to help.
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Re: Nonfiction Spanish Graded Readers?

Postby Kraut » Sun Nov 07, 2021 2:09 am

Olly Richards has started a series of non-fiction topics that target learners at an intermediate level. I have found two of them, the one at Lingq can be accessed directly.


Climate Change in Simple Spanish: Learn Spanish the Fun Way With Topics That Matter (Spanish Edition)

https://www.amazon.de/Climate-Change-Si ... B08QJ5M4TB


https://www.lingq.com/de/spanisch-lerne ... es/811367/

-------------------
World War II in Simple Spanish: Learn Spanish the Fun Way with Topics that Matter

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/582 ... le-spanish
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