小公女セーラ 10歳までに読みたい世界名作

This is your sign to re-read your childhood favourite books!!

I read the 講談社青い鳥文庫 version of the book! This was a great book to transition into getting used to reading Japanese novels as it was pretty easy and straightforward. Considering it was one of my childhood favourites, I thought it would be boring reading it again, but by the time I had finished about 70% of the book I felt so drawn into the story and had felt the same emotional connection that I had of loving it when I read it English and felt as if I was reliving and seeing it from a different perspective whilst reading it in a different language.

If you're on the fence about re-reading an old favourite just go for it! Your love for the book will help to bridge the unknown portions of the book. Words and phrases will also feel more familiar and homely to you, and it'll be easier to adapt and learn from.

This is an abridged version of A Little Princess by Frances Hodgson Burnett, translated into Japanese for kids. It's short (about 150 pages), the font size is gigantic, and almost all kanji have furigana (but as with most children's literature, there is not as much kanji as one might wish, so parsing long strings of hiragana can get a little tiresome).

I found this to be easy to read and enjoyable, but it is admittedly rather sappy, and I'm biased because I liked these kinds of books when I was growing up.

There's a surprising amount of world literature available translated into Japanese for kids, so if you like and are familiar with classic books like these, you may find them good material for beginner reading starting at upper N4.