An Elementary Spanish Reader

by Earl Stanley Harrison

Despite the title, this slim volume is aimed more at intermediate students of Spanish than novices. The book, converted from its physical edition to the digital format by a community of volunteers now that it is out of copyright, consists of some fables and poems, most of which were aimed at children in their original form.

Genres: Spanish Literature, Fiction, Spain, Education, Language

116 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 1912

Reviews

[Arimo · Rating 3 out of 5]

I found this book on a list of free e-books for people who study Spanish (https://www.fluentu.com/blog/spanish/...).

"An Elementary Spanish Reader" by Earl Stanley Harrison was the first (= easiest) book on the list. For beginner's Spanish reading, the book works very well. The fairytales in the collection are short and mainly simple, thus easy to understand. The book also has a very encompassing vocabulary list in the end. (Or to be more exact, the vocabulary section fills over half of the book.)

Most of the stories use simplified language. They're easy enough for A2 level speakers to follow with a dictionary. However, the difficulty levels jumps up near the end, making the last poetic fables more challenging than the previous stories.

[Jean · Rating 3 out of 5]

Charming (if somewhat predictable, and predictably sexist) stories. The poetry is very poorly formatted— it was illegible.

[Raha Shanehbandi]

An excellent introductory read for those wanting to learn Spanish. This collection of short stories was quite accessible as a high school freshman and propelled me in a positive direction toward my journey to fluency. The highlighting feature on Kindle makes it convenient to hover over unknown words and translate them.

[Jamie]

While technically I started reading "An Elementary Spanish Reader", I didn't get very far.
I don't recall what I read.
I am shelving this for now. Maybe I'll pick it back up in the future.

[Xujie8410 · Rating 5 out of 5]

Definitely a very great book for Spanish beginners.

[Logan · Rating 3 out of 5]

3 estrellas

Creo que este libro fue diseñado para engañar a los principiantes. Las frases son ciertamente cortas y entrecortadas, y el tema en sí mismo es algo básico, pero el autor parece pensar que los principiantes entienden fácilmente tanto el imperfecto del subjuntivo, como el oscuro lenguaje arcaico, como por ejemplo "alazán" (para cualquiera que se lo pregunte, es un caballo de color castaño). Creo que para los estudiantes más avanzados, sin embargo, este libro es una buena lectura y quizás incluso, sea una manera de aprender algunas palabras de vocabulario más antiguas.

[Robyn · Rating 4 out of 5]

I started this back in 2012, put it on the "shelf" for several years (since I read the iBooks version), then picked it up again in mid-July 2015.

I had heard most of these stories before (but in English), & it was nice to be able to read them in Spanish. I had the iBooks version open on my iPad to read the book, & I used the translator app on my phone to look up words I was not familiar with & write them down as extra notes in the margins. Most of what I didn't like about this book is attributed to the technology that ran too slow when taking & pulling up previously-recorded notes. But the vocabulary section in the back has explanations of proper nouns that won't come up in other translator sources.

[Ivonne Rovira · Rating 3 out of 5]

Now out of copyright, An Elementary Spanish Reader by Earl Stanley Harrison is available free on the Kindle and as an ebook from Project Gutenberg. While half of the slim volume consists of a glossary that is not cross-referenced and, therefore, unusable on the Kindle, the fables and poems are just at the right level for heritage learners of Spanish and for ambitious intermediate or advanced non-native students of Spanish.

For the price, you can't complain, and, as the daughter of Cubans, I enjoyed the blast from my own past. I recommend An Elementary Spanish Reader to anyone wanting to strengthen their grasp of Spanish.

[ana lopez · Rating 5 out of 5]

Awesome book

This book is awesome to read for Spanish people who don't know english. and they can be happy that they know english

[Inez Beall]

claro que si.