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(4/5)Fun to read with friends
The Japanese version of Magic Treehouse #1, includes the first 1 and second books of the series. I read this book with some friends on youtube so if anyone is struggling to read this, you can compare your understanding with ours.
Overal, these books had extremely easy vocabulary, most in the N5, or perhaps N4 area. The only difficult vocabulary words were really in the second half of the book, since they had words like "drawbridge" and such. For example, book 1 had almost no specific vocab words, cuz words like 'animal' and 'wings' are already in the N5 vocab area. I think the only really specific word in there was 'crest' which is the cartalioge on bird's heads like the red stuff on roosters. The first half of the book had 640 unique words, and I would guess the whole book probably only has 1,000 unquie words.
Because of the slight vocab differences, I probably would have rated Book two to be one noch harder than Book 1.
I really enjoy how the book shows both how short form(which is used in books) and colliqual form(which is used via speech) differ. Its fun to see things like って and と right next to each other. The hardest grammar that used quite a bit on these books is the use of いる・くる・いく in the 3rd POV way. As in the 3D camera way (not the future/past tense kid of way) I do not think this grammar point is commonly covered in beginner japanese lessons [I think they mostly just teach the いる・くる・いく's First person POV, which illustrates intent (am I leaving or comming back?)]
Anyway, in case you are wondering いる means the verb is happening within the camera's view point (camera follows verb) くる means the verb is happening toward the camera いくmeans the verb is happening away from the camera For example, "追いかけてくる" all on it's own means "Its chasing toward us/I" even though both the subject and object has been dropped.
Quite good overall. Since I read these as a kid, it gave me a good sense of nostalgia. :)
Just note that if you are reading on Kindle, the text can get really small at some points as it is part of some of the images (less than ~5% of the whole text is like this, though, so not a huge issue).
Read this based on the lengthy first review giving it tons of praise for being a great start into reading for upper beginners. Spot on and very approachable for mid-N4 level! The majority of this is very easy to understand language, with some sprinklings of specific words based on what time period Jack and Annie are in! Like ferns, extinction for the Dinosaur story and drawbridge, armor, banquet for the Knight story! There’s simple descriptive prose and lots of phrases are repeated so you can bet your bottom you’ll at least be aware of what it means even even you haven’t memorized it yet! I read it on Kindle with the Audible audiobook for the first story and half the second and that made dictionary lookups super fast and hearing it read by a native made it easier to figure out breaks in sentences. High rereading and relistening value.
My only grip is that in some of the pictures there’s text that you can’t select for dictionary lookups because they’re considered an image as well. It’s also small on Kindle but zooming helps a lot! Highly recommended. I’ll be reading more of this series!
This book was a lifesaver for me. The language is much more approachable than manga - lots of straightforward descriptive sentences without being too simple, which mixed together with the bits of dialogue (usually more difficult) made for an great entry into reading.
Yes there's a lot more words on the page and a bit more vocabulary than manga... but the standard language makes it way easier to consume. Googling vocabulary is easy... googling grammar & slang contractions is hard, which this book has less of.
Some people may be wary that this is a translation, but it's a popular series geared towards Japanese audiences. Looking back on this after reading more non-translated material, the only major difference I find is the lack of long run on sentences which seems to be a more 'Japanese' way of expressing things.
Regardless, I highly recommend this as a first jump into reading. You may be googling vocab and doing the occasional DeepL translation, but there's furigana on everything, it's very tractable and you'll learn a lot!
A good step into reading novels
I started reading this series after a year of reading manga as my first foray into reading real books. They're harder than most manga because there are (almost) no illustrations to provide context so it's up to your brain to do the heavy lifting of setting the scene, but they're also easier because they aren't overrun with casual speech. They repeat a lot of vocabulary and grammar points over and over again which is great.
I never read the series as a kid so I had no nostalgia for them and I was pleasantly surprised. They're fun adventures where a boy and his sister travel through time to different points in history and different regions, and sometimes they solve puzzles. I found them surprisingly entertaining, though the fact that I was reading them in a foreign language probably helped.