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Il corso del sabato

B1Romance≈460 words

Two people in a bicycle workshop need a better plan for getting home.

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Romance

Due partecipanti a un laboratorio di biciclette cercano un modo per non abbandonarlo.

Original short story written for this approximate editorial level.

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Il triangolo a matita

B1Mystery≈470 words

Matching marks in returned library books lead to an unexpected puzzle.

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Mystery

Un segno uguale compare nei libri che una biblioteca riceve da lettori diversi.

Original short story written for this approximate editorial level.

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Il piccolo principe

Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

B1–B2Fantasy

A pilot stranded in the desert meets a little prince who has traveled from a tiny planet.

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Fantasy · Friendship and family

A pilot stranded in the desert meets a little prince who has traveled from a tiny planet. Through stories of a beloved rose, peculiar adults, and a wise fox, their friendship opens a gentle reflection on love, loneliness, and the things that give life meaning.

Concrete encounters and repeated dialogue help, while figurative meaning and hypotheticals add depth.

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Source and license

Antoine de Saint-Exupéry — Il piccolo principe. Italian translation: Franco Perini (2016). Source: https://it.wikisource.org/wiki/Il_piccolo_principe. Translation licensed CC BY-SA 3.0 under specific Wikimedia permission ticket 2016111410012419; https://it.wikisource.org/wiki/Discussione:Il_piccolo_principe. Text-only EPUB prepared by LingoReader; prose unchanged. All source revisions, contributor names, history and licence links retained in EPUB attribution. Cover: Original LingoReader title-cover design.

Le avventure di Pinocchio: Storia di un burattino

Carlo Collodi

B1–B2Fantasy

The wooden puppet Pinocchio longs for adventure but repeatedly falls into trouble through impatience, dishonesty, and misplaced trust.

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Fantasy · Travel and adventure

The wooden puppet Pinocchio longs for adventure but repeatedly falls into trouble through impatience, dishonesty, and misplaced trust. As he wanders away from the loving Geppetto, strange encounters and difficult lessons challenge him to discover what responsibility and becoming a real boy might mean.

Repeated concrete action and direct dialogue help, while older forms and colloquial idioms add difficulty.

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Source and license

Collodi, Carlo — Le avventure di Pinocchio: Storia di un burattino. Complete 36-chapter Pinocchio novel. Eighty-four identified illustrations and captions omitted; literary text retained. Source acknowledgement: https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/52484. Cover: Project Gutenberg source edition; original source cover retained unchanged.

Favole scelte dalla raccolta dei fratelli Grimm

Jacob Grimm · Wilhelm Grimm

B2–C1Fantasy

This selection of the Brothers Grimm's tales follows children, animals, and travelers through magical encounters and difficult tests.

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Fantasy

This selection of the Brothers Grimm's tales follows children, animals, and travelers through magical encounters and difficult tests. Unexpected helpers and dangerous adversaries reveal the consequences of kindness, courage, pride, and cunning, in stories that can shift quickly from comic wonder to darker lessons.

Familiar repeated plots help, but the translation retains many archaic expressions and sentence forms.

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Le avventure d'Alice nel paese delle meraviglie

Lewis Carroll

B2–C1Fantasy

Alice follows a hurried White Rabbit down a rabbit hole and enters a world where size, language, and logic keep changing.

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Fantasy · Comedy

Alice follows a hurried White Rabbit down a rabbit hole and enters a world where size, language, and logic keep changing. Talking animals, an eccentric tea party, and the Queen of Hearts turn her search for a way onward into a delightfully bewildering adventure.

Concrete scenes help, while archaic translation choices, wordplay, and verse add difficulty.

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La favorita del Mahdi

Emilio Salgari

B2–C1Travel and adventure

In Sudan during the Mahdist uprising, the officer Abd-el-Kerim's love for Elenka becomes caught in dangerous rivalries and shifting allegiances.

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Travel and adventure · History

In Sudan during the Mahdist uprising, the officer Abd-el-Kerim's love for Elenka becomes caught in dangerous rivalries and shifting allegiances. War, jealousy, and the influence of the Mahdi's favorite turn their personal struggle into an adventure across a landscape of battles, pursuit, and uncertain loyalties.

Adventure scenes use descriptive vocabulary, older forms, and geographically specific terms.

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L'indomani

Neera

B2–C1Romance

Newly married Marta expects the lasting romantic happiness she has imagined since girlhood, but daily life with Alberto brings unfamiliar realities.

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Romance · Friendship and family

Newly married Marta expects the lasting romantic happiness she has imagined since girlhood, but daily life with Alberto brings unfamiliar realities. As she learns how little she knows about her husband, the novel explores the distance between an ideal marriage and a woman's lived experience.

Concrete domestic scenes accompany descriptive imagery and indirect emotional reflection.

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Il mistero del poeta

Antonio Fogazzaro

B2–C1Romance

A poet's private manuscript reveals an intense love story centered on Violet, a woman he meets while traveling.

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Romance · Arts and culture

A poet's private manuscript reveals an intense love story centered on Violet, a woman he meets while traveling. As their attachment grows, distance, past obligations, and carefully guarded truths make love inseparable from uncertainty, in a reflective novel that blends confession, memory, and poetry.

Reflective first-person narration uses layered clauses and figurative expressions.

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Damiano: Storia di una povera famiglia

Giulio Carcano

B2–C1Friendship and family

Young Damiano hopes to become an artist while helping a poor family survive in nineteenth-century Milan.

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Friendship and family · History

Young Damiano hopes to become an artist while helping a poor family survive in nineteenth-century Milan. His ambitions bring him into conflict with economic hardship and social barriers, in a story that follows the cost of talent, loyalty, and hope when opportunity is scarce.

Clear family scenes mix older vocabulary with elaborate emotional description.

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Tristi Amori

Giuseppe Giacosa

B2–C1Romance

Emma, the wife of lawyer Giulio Scarli, has fallen in love with his colleague Fabrizio.

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Romance · Friendship and family

Emma, the wife of lawyer Giulio Scarli, has fallen in love with his colleague Fabrizio. Their secret relationship unsettles a seemingly ordinary provincial home, in a play that brings passion into painful conflict with trust, family affection, and the responsibilities of marriage.

Theatrical dialogue is compact, with idiomatic expressions and abstract emotional comparisons.

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A level is a starting point.

These are approximate editorial reading guides, not certified CEFR assessments or a test of your proficiency. A classic’s range reflects this edition’s language; a short story’s label is its writing target. Familiarity with the subject and the help you use can change how a text feels.

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