But if I look back, I will choose to start with katakana and/or practice N5 at Renshuu (kanji to english definition, kanji to hiragana, or hiragana to english definition in multiply choice) while reading picture book with hiragana/katakana only (sometimes with some basic kanji) to strengthen my hiragana.
I don't read fairy tale for reading since I'm not that pump about the genre, but Japan is really amazing, they have variety of kid's book (there books that are long and sometimes, hard (there's a lot of kanji) too) that is not limited to only traditional or classic story. Best of all, they're free.
When I was studying hiragana I tried these things: 1) Read texts with hiragana (like books for kids) 2) Learn words from JLPT that just includes hiragana (like とても、ありがとう、きれい、いる、する、etc.). The same for katakana (here you will learn lot of nouns like ベッド、タバコ、バス、etc. 3) Then I studied the most basic kanjis of JLPT with less strokes like 一, 二, 三, 大, 人, 水, 犬, 力, 工, etc. 4) After that I studied some basic words with those kanjis and hiragana like 大きい. They usually are verbs and adjectives and you won't find words with kanji + katakana. 5) And then you can continue studying more complicated kanjis and words from JLPT N5.
I made a list in Microsoft Excel with all the kanjis from N5 to N1 organized by strokes count and I'm making another list with all the words from N5 to N1 organized by quantity of characters, level of the kanjis included and strokes count. So first you will find first words with 2 characters in hiragana from N5, then with 3 characters, then 4, etc. and in the end you will find words with kanjis from N1 with the kanjis not included in the list of JLPT and with a big amount of strokes.
I'm adding this list to this site in the category Miscellaneous->JLPT N5 (grouped by complexity). I finished with all N5 kanjis and I'll do the same with all the N5 words. So I think this will be good for you to studying (and good for me for reviewing).
