華麗なる探偵アリス&ペンギン トラブル・ハロウィン

Fluffy and easy to read children's chapter book

I read this 2 years ago because it was one of the very few children’s chapter books in Japanese that was available at my local library. I was starting to read Japanese again after being out of practice for a long time and this was just the right level. The library only had this book — volume 5 in the series — but it didn’t matter. I had no trouble immediately grasping the situation and main characters. There are 3 stories in the book.

I don’t remember the plots well after 2 years. The girl protagonist seems ordinary but has a secret life in which she transforms into magical girl Alice, and can solve little mysteries with her talking penguin friend. It’s a fluffy children’s chapter book aimed at coaxing children to read even when it’s hard for them, and in that role I thought it was really well designed.

And it’s good for learning to read Japanese. I was honestly surprised and impressed by how many characteristics this book had that made it easy to follow for people (children or language students) who aren’t strong at reading yet.

The stories are fast-paced and only about 60 pages each, so you feel them progressing even while reading slowly. The characters are familiar archetypes, and even without complex descriptions it’s easy for the reader to grasp their personalities. The sentence structure is short and action-oriented. There’s some light character speech, of the sort you’re probably already familiar with from anime. There’s plenty of kanji to break up the hiragana, making it easier to separate words. And the book has full furigana.

Did I want to read any more in the series after finishing this volume? No. But I finished this book cheerfully, it helped me shore up my basic reading comprehension, gave me confidence in what I’d learned, and put me in a better place for trying something a bit more difficult for my next book.