Parallel texts work quite well without having read it before too if you keep the original next to you. I lifted by German up a whole grade my last year, largely by reading Goethe's Faust in parallel with a translation.
Having an easy version is a big boon, though, and I think LLMs now provide an amazing opportunity to create custom proper parallel texts (showing both) where you could adjust the difficulty level of the translation to suit your current skill level.
Having an easy version is a big boon, though, and I think LLMs now provide an amazing opportunity to create custom proper parallel texts (showing both) where you could adjust the difficulty level of the translation to suit your current skill level.