Russians - recommendations in (very) easy Russian?

[kiki1982]

So, I decided to get Russian under my belt so I could read it properly instad of relying on translation.

Now I have finished my grammar book (Russian for Everybody, alledgedly very good), and have seen pretty much everything that is important, grammar-wise. Though, what it did not really do satisfactorily was getting vocab down my neck. I have a few loopholes. F.e. what usually evry student at that level should know: the weather (cloud, sunshine, cloudy, rain, etc), clothing, food, I only know a limited amount of words. I know how you say 'it is raining', but I wouldn't know how to say 'it is sunny/cloudy'. I know what a shirt is, but I don't think I know what a dress is.

Any ideas for really simple stuff in Russian, i.e. kids' stuff really? A little bit of newspaper maybe (not politics, that will be for later ;))?

I don't mind looking up an awful lot, but not too long and foremost, I need to be able to understand the sentence.

I have tried small fairy tales, but sometimes they can be a problem too.

[arrytus]

When I was trying to learn Russian after learning the grammar and vocab I got one of the dual language books with short stories by gogol, chekov and dostoevsky, etc [ISBN-10: 0486262448]. the stories themselves aren't very good but it will definitely help. i would stay away from poetry though for a while, because play on words and concepts and dialects are quite tough [e.g. Pushkin]

but if you want fables, Ivan Krilov is known as the Russian Aesop