魔女の宅急便 1

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 maybe what made the difference isn't so much that 魔女の宅急便 is more difficult than those books but that I used an ebook in my second attempt which made looking up words easier.

I also read this together with the audiobook. The audiobook is wonderful. The way the narrator does the voices for kiki and jiji is adorable. Back then the audio books for all volumes were available in audible internationally. That's unfortunately no longer the case. They are only on audible.jp which requires a Japanese credit card or address or something. The first three volumes are on audiobook.jp though which I believe to be more accessible.