Book Dash · African Storybook · free and openly licensed
Hundreds of free South African storybooks in Afrikaans, English, isiXhosa and isiZulu — sorted by how hard they actually are to read. Neither library lets you filter by reading level, so every book here was opened, its story text measured, and a level worked out from it.
Tell it what grade your child is in and it will show the books pitched at them. Everything is free to read online or download, from the library that published it.
Pick a grade to see what that means. An additional language is usually read about a grade behind a home language, and this allows for that.
No books match those filters. Try widening the level or clearing the search.
The five levels come from African Storybook, the scheme South African teachers and libraries already use. In South Africa most children learn a home language and a first additional language, and reading in the additional language usually runs about a grade behind. Both columns are below.
| Level | What a page looks like | Home language | Additional language | Books |
|---|
Treat the grades as a starting point, not a test. Children vary enormously, and the level is measured from the text alone — it can't know that a book about taxis will hold your child's attention and one about snow won't. If a book feels like hard work, drop a level; if it's read in one sitting, go up. A book a child can read comfortably on their own is usually a level below what they can manage with help.
The books come from two open libraries. Book Dash is a South African non-profit that gathers volunteer creative teams to make new African storybooks and gives them away. African Storybook, run by Saide, publishes openly licensed stories in over 200 African languages; only the titles their editors have approved are listed here. The stories, illustrations and covers belong to those projects and their creators, named on each card. Read online and Get the PDF both go to the originating library — no book is re-hosted here.
This index is a free, non-commercial community project. It carries no advertising and is not monetised in any way.
What this page adds is the reading level, which Book Dash does not publish. For each edition the story text was read out of the ebook PDF, the cover, "this book belongs to", ISBN and credits pages were stripped, and what remained was measured: words per page, sentences per page, sentence length and vocabulary. Levels follow the African Storybook 1–5 scheme, with the band edges set from where this catalogue actually clusters. Band edges are judgement calls — treat a level as a starting point, not a verdict.
Licence. Every book here is openly licensed, which is why an index like this can exist — but the exact terms differ per book, so each card shows its own licence. All Book Dash titles are CC BY 4.0. African Storybook titles are mostly CC BY, with some CC BY-NC (non-commercial), which this non-commercial project satisfies. Titles, blurbs and covers are reproduced from those works under their licences and credited to their creators. Where a licence forbids derivatives, the cover is not reproduced and the card links out instead.
The reading levels and text statistics are not part of the original works — they were computed independently for this page. This index is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or checked by Book Dash or African Storybook.