Skip to main content

We use necessary storage for sign-in and preferences. With your consent, we use self-hosted Umami analytics to understand aggregate use of MovaReader. Privacy Policy

MovaReader
Login

Ukrainian books for B1

At B1 you read in all the tenses and can follow a story without stopping on every line. The shelf holds ten MovaReader adaptations of famous Ukrainian works, retold in simple modern Ukrainian: Kotliarevsky’s comic Eneida (1798), Kvitka-Osnovianenko’s The Witch of Konotop (1833), Kulish’s The Black Council (1857), Marko Vovchok’s The Institute Girl (1862), Nechuy-Levytsky’s Kaidash’s Family (1879), Panas Myrnyi’s Do the Oxen Low When the Manger Is Full? (1880), Olha Kobylianska’s The Princess (1896), Franko’s Crossed Paths (1900), and Lesya Ukrainka’s dramas The Noblewoman (1910) and The Forest Song (1911). They are not the original texts.

B1

10 books

The level's books side by side

The catalog measures the average sentence length and the share of long words, 9 letters or more. The ten books have 11-12 words per sentence, as many complete classics on the B2 shelf do, but long words are rarer: one in 17 to one in 23, against one in 16 to one in 10 there. The old spelling, dialect forms and verse of the originals are gone. In each book the difficulty is even across the chapters.

How these books read in MovaReader

Tap an unfamiliar word and its translation appears right there, with no dictionary in another tab. The reader remembers your place and the words you opened. Signing up is free.

Start for free Reader · €1 a month

Before you read

Are these the original texts?

No. All ten are MovaReader adaptations in simple modern Ukrainian of works from 1798 to 1911, by Kotliarevsky, Kvitka-Osnovianenko, Kulish, Marko Vovchok, Nechuy-Levytsky, Panas Myrnyi, Olha Kobylianska, Ivan Franko and Lesya Ukrainka (two dramas); Eneida and Lesya Ukrainka’s dramas are retold from verse into prose. Some side scenes are shortened or left out. Crossed Paths is also in the catalog as a complete text at C1; the other originals are not.

How is B1 different from A2 in this catalog?

At A2 the books have 9-10 words per sentence and a long word once in 19 to once in 30 words. At B1 they have 11-12 words per sentence, a long word once in 17 to once in 23, all the tenses and more idioms.

How long does a book take?

One to two hours: from about 4,500 words (Eneida) to about 6,400 (Crossed Paths), in 9-14 chapters.

What should I read after B1?

The B2 shelf, where the complete originals begin. Start with Kotsiubynsky’s Intermezzo, about 4,000 words, Hrinchenko’s The Exam and Other Stories, about 8,400, or Kotliarevsky’s play Natalka Poltavka, about 9,400.