Errr, anyway, I'm too old to have started with Dragonlance as my first fantasy books, but I'm pretty sure I read Lloyd Alexander's books, then moved to Brook's Shanara books and finally Dragonlance when I was about 10 or 11.
I didn't have any problem reading them at that age and enjoyed them more than Terry Brooks's Shanara stuff.
I was online looking to buy new copies of Chronicles for myself and saw that there are 'young reader' versions of the stories. Not sure just how young but might be something to look into.