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Book #2 »
Genres
Slice Of Life
83%
Fantasy
33%
Content Tags
Full Furigana
100%
Witch
91%
Female Protagonist
87%
Cat
75%
Magic
62%
Level 24
WK
BC

魔女の宅急便 1

Children's book
by 角野 栄子
volume 1 of 魔女の宅急便
alternative titles:

Kiki’s Delivery Service Vol 1

( 117 ratings, 12 reviews )
person( 100 reading, 174 finished )
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Series Blurb

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[DeepL Translation - needs review] Kiki, a 13-year-old witch who has come to her first town to be on her own, starts a business, a courier service, in her new town. The film depicts a year in which she and her black cat Gigi, her partner, share joys and sorrows as they become accepted by the people of the town.

(Translator: DeepL)

Specs

Page Count:
256
ISBN:
4041031850
ISBN13:
9784041031858

More Information help_outline

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Reviews

(3.66/5)
117 ratings12 reviews
Entertainment(3.36/5)
28 ratings
Language learning(3.69/5)
29 ratings
DaphneTheFirstsays
February 13, 2025

Good book

Overall, this is a really good book. It's different enough from the movie that you can read it without it feeling repetitive. Each chapter is a little story in it's own so it's perfect if you want to pair it with other books and read a chapter at a time.

Language Learning⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ I've been asking my Japanese tutor to help me understand some difficult sentences and to her understanding the grammar in this book is a bit outdated. There are also many spoken grammar structures that can make it

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Talndirsays
January 30, 2025

Reasonably fun and useful, but not the best beginner book

魔女の宅急便 is a classic children's book, with an excellent Studio Ghibli film adaptation. It is relatively entertaining, although the episodic nature (each chapter is essentially a standalone incident Kiki is involved with) means there isn't really a strong story to carry you through. If you're an adult then unless you really love the film it might get boring for you, especially if you read slowly. I never got bored but didn't find each story that engrossing.

This book is often recommended to begin

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Oiantakusays
April 14, 2024

Not the best novel to start out with

This might be the one book that is most often recommended as the first native japanese book to read. Personally, i have to disagree. This being a children´s book, it suffers from the same problems like other children´s books do, which is of course the lack of kanji. It´s hard to parse and annoying if you already know quite a few of those. And don´t be fooled - this might be classified as a "children´s book" but it reads more like being aimed at young teenagers. There is some scary grammar in

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krghtjsays
February 16, 2024

Slightly Boring but Useful

I genuinely don't have much to comment on. This book is frequently recommended due to its simplicity. Also, you've probably already seen the movie, so you should be vaguely familiar with the plot. Even if you aren't, there's not much to get confused about as the story is pretty simple. Kiki, with her cat companion Jiji, flies to a new town to help the citizens. Eventually, she opens a delivery service and goes on a bunch of small adventures helping customers.

At first, the lack use of kanji an

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Neginsays
December 31, 2023

I wish I had read this when I was a kid. There are many life lessons in this book I wish I'd been taught when I was little. However I still enjoyed this story very much even as an adult, thanks to endearing characters, beautiful world and the heartwarming tone.

Difficulty: Nothing crazy about vocabulary and grammar, but constant use of casual/children speech made me regret picking up this book as one of the first books to read in Japanese.

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labadoosays
July 12, 2022

Great for learning but felt a bit boring due to being a children's book (personal opinion)

I can definitely recommend this as a good starting point for language learners getting into novels. Most difficult Kanji are replaced with hiragana readings, no use of sonkeigo/kenjougo, and no over-the-top wordplay/literary devices. Something I struggled with in this book was memorizing a large amount of onomatopoeia.

Personally, I prefer a slightly more mature story. So at times, reading this felt like a chore, but it was an excellent step to gaining confidence to tackle more engaging novels.

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hafuhelenasays
July 9, 2022

Language Learning

I have read this book a couple of times now. I think it's so so useful when you're just getting into reading books in Japanese. Pretty much all the vocabulary used is commonly known (as it's targeted at kids) so you don't have to waste effort looking up and studying obscure words. A couple complaints I often see about 魔女の宅急便 is that:

  • There's not enough kanji
  • There's too much onomatopoeia

But, I think both of these things actually improve the book's utility as a languag

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bbosays
May 22, 2022

I really liked this book

I really liked this book. I think it's worth a read even in English and even for adults. Unfortunately the English translation seems to be out of print.

And don't think it's the same as the gihibli movie. About halve of the movie was made up. The book is more episodic with a handful of adventures.

Language learning wise, this was the first book in Japanese that I attempted to read. But I gave up and came back to it after having read one or two junior bunko books (books with furigana). Though m

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basilsaucesays
June 24, 2021

EDITED REVIEW (June 2022, 1 year later)

This is the book which inspired the Ghibli movie “Kiki’s Delivery Service.” It’s episodic, so each chapter has a different adventure with some new vocabulary. Some of the stories were adapted for the movie and will be familiar, while others will be new.

This used to be the JP community’s default “everyone’s first book” recommendation, but the more I’ve read, the more I wonder about that. It’s a charming story but there were other books I read later which

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potatopuddingsays
March 29, 2025

Lots of onomatopoeia

I enjoyed reading the source material for a beloved Ghibli classic. The reading level was overall great for beginners. However I personally found the amount of onomatopoeia overwhelming since that's an area I struggled with. A lot of words that I'm used to seeing in kanji were also in kana, which took my brain a while longer to catch up on. If you're comfortable slogging through a ton of onomatopoeia then this would be a good read.

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Shannonsays
December 15, 2021

This was the first Light Novel that I ever read in Japanese. This version has quite a bit of kanji, but also many words in katakana that would have been in kanji for adult readers. I essentially machine translated and looked up vocabulary and grammar for every sentence of the first 5 chapters, then looked us words in the next 3 chapters, then just read the last 4 chapters (without really caring for full detail, but to be finished). It was very educational. I read with WaniKani Book Club and

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morisays
May 29, 2021

Perfect First Novel for me

This was the first true novel I read start to finish in Japanese. Though a childrens novel, I think it makes a fun read for all ages. It's so cute---I love it! It includes some flowery language and lots of onomotopoeia which is great for learning. I know I'll eventually read the rest of the series, though for now I'm moving on to some more challenging novels.

I'd recommend the 角川文庫 version for those comfortable with kanji as it removes comprehensive furigana. Though the 角川文庫 version doesn't in

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June 12, 2025
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September 29, 2024
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September 27, 2024
polvrated
July 23, 2024
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July 11, 2024
cha0srated
June 7, 2024
TeapotToTortoiserated
December 27, 2023
lunarrabbitrated
October 14, 2023

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Tags

Genres
Slice Of Life
83%
Fantasy
33%
Content Tags
Full Furigana
100%
Witch
91%
Female Protagonist
87%
Cat
75%
Magic
62%
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