Although I started learning Spanish in late 2024, I didn’t actually start reading seriously until late 2025.
Maybe that’s crazy, especially if you come from the traditional method of learning. However, when I was learning Spanish in school, I think I focused too much on the grammar/spelling aspect of the language that after 3 years… I could not speak a single word, and I honestly could not understand a single word being said to me.
So, this time around, I decided to first focus on my listening and speaking skills, and put reading and writing on the backburner.
But of course, at some point, reading became inevitable, which is where we are today.
The goal
I set an arbitrary goal of reading 1,000,000 words–and yes, I recognize this post says 1/3 of that amount–this is going to be the first “update”. You see–I tried 100,000 words as the goal at first, but that was easily surpassed once I finished the first Harry Potter book. So… for now, 300,000 feels reasonable.
I may have also be influenced by Reddit update posts such as this one that shared their reading lists.
My list
| Book | Author | WC | Date Started | Date Finished |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Hola Lola – A1 | Juan Fernandez | 19354 | 12/2025 | ~ |
| Dinosaurios Al Atardecer | Mary Pope Osborne | 5784 | 1/2025 | ~ |
| El Caballero del Alba | Mary Pope Osborne | 6459 | ~ | ~ |
| Una momia al amanecer | Mary Pope Osborne | 6095 | ~ | ~ |
| Un Hombre Fascinante – A2 | Juan Fernandez | 28239 | ~ | 3/13/2026 |
| Piratas después del mediodía | Mary Pope Osborne | 6360 | ~ | 3/14/2026 |
| La Noche de los Ninjas | Mary Pope Osborne | 6746 | 4/8/2026 | 4/10/2026 |
| Una tarde en el amazonas | Mary Pope Osborne | 6051 | 4/10/2026 | 4/2026 |
| Un tigre dientes de sable en el ocaso | Mary Pope Osborne | 6432 | 5/2026 | 5/2026 |
| Harry Potter y la piedra filosofal | JK Rowling | 81441 | 5/18/2026 | 5/22/2026 |
| Medianoche en la luna | Mary Pope Osborne | 7236 | 5/2026 | 5/23/2026 |
| Delfines al amanecer | Mary Pope Osborne | 5475 | 5/25/2026 | 5/25/2026 |
| Quijote y Yo The Camaquen Trilogy | Constanza Ontaneda | 12700 | 1/2025 | 5/25/2026 |
| Atardecer en el pueblo fantasma | Mary Pope Osborne | 7736 | 5/26/2026 | 5/27/2026 |
| Leones a la hora del almuerzo | Mary Pope Osborne | 6351 | 5/28/2026 | 5/29/2026 |
| Los Juegos del Hambre | Suzanne Collins | 100049 | 5/23/2026 | 6/3/2026 |
| Total: | 312,508 |
~ Didn’t track… I just was not very good at writing down when I started nor ended, especially in the beginning–but everything on this list I finished!
As you can see, this is a bit of a chaotic table and I was not very consistent with tracking when exactly I started nor ended each book, especially in the beginning. Reading, even children’s chapter books like The Magic Tree House (La casa del arbol) did not truly feel “doable” until May. But you’ll see that while the Magic Tree House books took me several weeks to read in the beginning (I read the first three books, Dinosaurios al atardecer, El caballero del alba, and Una momia al amanecer together took me up until March to read), I am able to start and finish one in a single day (about an hour or so) starting in May.
How I got comfortable with reading
I attribute this growth largely to having read the first Harry Potter book–at a whopping 81,441 words, it is 10x the length of any of the Magic Tree House books I’ve read previously, and I think there are two things about Harry Potter that propelled this growth: (1) the more complex vocabulary, and (2) the sheer length (more exposure = more practice).
Now, my reading of Harry Potter was not perfect. The way I got through Harry Potter rather quickly, even at my very beginner-reading level, is that I listened to the audio book while reading along.
Maybe people on the language learning/Dreaming Spanish subreddits would even say that I “cheated” (but this is my own blog, and I can write about whatever I want!), but I am of the belief that more exposure to the language cannot be bad, and so long as I am I still looking at the words on the page, I will count it as reading.
The benefit to the audiobook is that (1) the Harry Potter audiobook narrators uses character voices to help anchor you in the story (I listened to the one narrated by Carlos Ponce, but Leonor Watling is good as well!), and (2) it was too annoying for me to pause the audiobook to look up words so I mostly… didn’t.
Because I knew the story well (though it has been about 10 years since I read the books), that was really all I needed. If a word really came up many times and I felt it was necessary to know what it meant, I looked it up of course, but for the most part context clues alone was enough. Words like “owl” (lechuza), “wand” (varita), “goblin” (duende) literally came up so many times that by the end it was a solid part of my vocabulary.
This brings me to my next point: sometimes, you need to challenge yourself to get to the next “level”.
Don’t wait for content to be “unlocked”
On the comprehensible input (CI) spaces (and the Dreaming Spanish subreddit in particular, because I think for Spanish that’s where the CI folks are), people always talked about how they’ve “unlocked” the next level of content.
“I unlocked podcasts!”
“I unlocked Youtube videos!”
“I unlocked native Netflix!”
This really just means that they’ve reached the level of comprehending the ‘next most difficult’ piece of content.
I like the idea of “leveling up” and in the beginning of my journey, too, I was using this sort of language to describe my progression through different Spanish learner content. But one thing that people also always say is that they’d try a piece of content, and if they deem it to be “too hard”, then they would say it’s not yet “unlocked”, and therefore return to what they were listening to or reading before.
Now: I don’t think the content that you consume needs to be so hard that it is frustrating, or so hard that you feel like you have to look up every word, or so hard that you don’t understand a single thing of what happened in the video/text.
However, I think you are doing yourself a disservice if you do not try to challenge yourself, and deem something as “too hard” just because you don’t comprehend it with the same amount of ease as you do with easier content. Challenging content is supposed to be challenging. But if you put in the time and effort to challenge yourself, you will be rewarded by faster growth.
So don’t wait around waiting for books or content to be “unlocked”. Unlock it yourself.
And I think this mindset is also why I am not a fan of graded readers.
My thoughts on graded readers
On language learning subreddits and especially the Dreaming Spanish subreddit, you’ll see lots of people recommending graded readers.
I think they are… fine. I get why people like them, and a lot of these language learner book lists are full of Juan Fernandez, Paco Ardit, etc.
I read two of Juan Fernandez’s books (I really like his podcast which is how I found his books to begin with!) and I also tried Constanza Ontaneda’s Quijote y Yo series (review to come!), but I frankly found them to be quite boring. I can read them comfortably–basically at around the same speed as I do in English, but I find the plots to be a lot less interesting.
I understand that’s the point–like the plot is simple and the sentence structures and phrases are repeated in graded readers–but I’d rather be challenged when I read. I don’t need the false sense of achievement of “I can read as fast as I do in English” with a graded reader.
So for that reason… though I read a total of 3 graded readers, I will not be purchasing any more.
Reflections & What’s Next?
The next 700,000 words of course!
In all seriousness, I am so excited to have “unlocked” (see what I did there?) reading. I have been excitedly re-reading all of my childhood faves (as you can see by my table!).
I will continue reading Magic Tree House, likely until book 24 because that’s what my library has in Spanish. The reason I will continue enjoy them is because I like that they have some specialized vocabulary. As of the writing of this blog post, I just finished Atardecer en el Pueblo Fantasma and because there were horses involved I learned all sorts of horse vocabulary (mare, foal, whinny, gallop, stirrup, saddle, bridle, etc.–do I need them? likely not. But I liked that I learned them!).
Plus–they’re fun, nostalgic for me (they’re the first series of books I read when I moved to the U.S. and was learning to read in English too!), and I can easily knock one out during a lunch break.
On deck I also have the rest of the Harry Potter series, though I hope to be moving off the audiobook train soon and be able to read them independently as my reading speed surpasses that of a narrator’s. I also have Anthony Horowitz’s Alex Rider series, though so far, only the first 4 books has been translated into Spanish. I will also be attempting the Spanish translation of the Warrior Cats series (Los Gatos Guerreros), A Series of Unfortunate Events (Una serie de catastroficas desdichas), and I am so so so excited to finish the rest of The Hunger Games.
When I say I’m revisiting all my childhood faves, I mean it!