Finding short, easy, illustrated Hebrew readers for true beginners — the kind that introduce one vowel at a time — is surprisingly difficult if you don’t want to spend a lot of money. Basically, I was looking for the Hebrew equivalent of decodable readers or phonics readers.
From another home-educator, I was kindly gifted a 16-booklet set written by Mrs. Grama, which is very helpful. Although the booklets mix Niqud (vowels) from the beginning, they start with short sentences/ stories, and gradually build up to somewhat longer stories.
But I wanted more practice, especially at the lower levels. Instead of spending even more hours searching, I decided to start creating instead. I’m sharing the readers here for free, hoping it helps other home-educating parents (and teachers).
Each reader has two files. The one for screen reading lets the educator preview the story on the screen (i.e., the first page is first). The print version is formatted so that when you select ‘print as booklet,’ it prints with the correct orientation for Hebrew (i.e., the first page is last on the screen).
The readers also come with a vocabulary list with translations.
Kamatz
These readers only contain the niqud Kamatz.
Story 1: Natan print-version screen-reading version