February 1, 2024

Engaging Stories that are Perfect for Beginners

All of the stories were roughly the same in terms of my interest. I was engaged throughout, but they probably wouldn't be stories I would have read if I wasn't reading to study a foreign language. The slight twists are enjoyable, and I found the characters interesting. As this is a children's book, the stories have pretty obvious life lessons. If you think this would be irritating, this probably isn't the book for you.

The stories all have a recurring structure. A bunch of people try and solve their problems with magic candy. Once you have read the first one, you know how the major events of all of them will go, which can aid in comprehension. While the stories are formulaic, it doesn't mean they aren't interesting. Each story has slight differences in its mood, plot, and ending. Combined with the fact that each story is only 20 or so pages, reading them is less draining than full stories and you don't need to remember a lot of characters or events at a given moment.

The sentences are very short most of the time. If you tried reading other stories, but found the long sentences with a bunch of commas and clauses difficult to understand, you may find this book easier to read. The book also contains furigana.

The biggest difficulty I had was with onomatopoeia. Most learners have difficulty with this, but it was especially hard for this book. I couldn't find some onomatopoeia in a dictionary. Others are emphasized variations of other onomatopoeia that make it difficult for non-native speakers to tell the meaning, or even what to find in a dictionary. To give an English example of what I mean, instead of something like "boom," the book would sometimes use "ba-ba-booomm." As you can imagine, it is much harder to look in a dictionary for the meaning of these. I would not worry about it, however. They are infrequent and you can search for the meaning on Google. You can find readers explaining the meaning on the Wanikani Book Club forum.

Something else to keep in mind is that the recurring character 紅子 speaks in Keigo. I was able to pick up/understand by context what she was saying, but if you aren't familiar with the basics of Keigo it will be confusing. Just know that ござんす means ある and you'll probably get most of it.

If you don't know, this book is the first in a pretty long series of related short stories, so if you enjoyed this I would recommend picking up the others. I haven't read past the first book though, so I can't comment on potential difficulty or style changes.

Gradings:6
2
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krghtj graded
on May 30, 2024
krghtj graded
on February 16, 2024
easier than魔女の宅急便 1L25
krghtj graded
on February 4, 2024
similar in difficulty toJapanese Folktales for Language LearnersL25
krghtj graded
on February 4, 2024
harder than星の王子さまL23
krghtj graded
on February 1, 2024