Lewis Carroll · 1832
5–8 unknown words per 100 at CET-4 level. Looking each one up will stall you; this one wants glosses that appear in place.
Coverage = the share of words in the text you already know. The research gives two lines: 98% before independent fluent reading is realistic, 95% for the instructional level that needs support (Hu & Nation, 2000). Proper nouns are not counted as unknown — recognising that it is a name is enough; this book has 154 of them.
CET-6 and up, or read it with glosses. 29,915 words in total; at 150 words a minute for a non-native reader, about 3 h 19 min to finish. Average sentence length 13.8 words. Reaching 95% coverage on this book (the floor for readability) takes roughly 13,500 word families.
The opening of Through the Looking-Glass, word for word. Tap any word you don't know and its meaning here appears beside it — no sign-up, tap as often as you like.
One thing was certain, that the _white_ kitten had had nothing to do with it:—it was the black kitten’s fault entirely. For the white kitten had been having its face washed by the old cat for the last quarter of an hour (and bearing it pretty well, considering); so you see that it _couldn’t_ have had any hand in the mischief.
The way Dinah washed her children’s faces was this: first she held the poor thing down by its ear with one paw, and then with the other paw she rubbed its face all over, the wrong way, beginning at the nose: and just now, as I said, she was hard at work on the white kitten, which was lying quite still and trying to purr—no doubt feeling that it was all meant for its good.
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The numbers above are computed, but we haven't cut Through the Looking-Glass into passages yet.
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These are already built, and closest in difficulty to Through the Looking-Glass.
Ordered by unknown words per 100. Lower reads easier; to step up a level, pick a higher number.
Computed by Readii from the public-domain text (updated 2026-10-21), not estimated by hand. The Readii reading level is our own scale, anchored on unknown-word density; it is not the same system as Lexile or AR and does not convert directly. Unknown words are measured against the CET-4 ∪ Gaokao lists, so this is difficulty for a Chinese-speaking learner, not a native-child reading level.