魔女の宅急便 1

Language Learning

I have read this book a couple of times now. I think it's so so useful when you're just getting into reading books in Japanese. Pretty much all the vocabulary used is commonly known (as it's targeted at kids) so you don't have to waste effort looking up and studying obscure words. A couple complaints I often see about 魔女の宅急便 is that:

• There's not enough kanji
• There's too much onomatopoeia

But, I think both of these things actually improve the book's utility as a language learning resource. It's really good practice to start associating words with their sounds rather than over-relying on kanji as you don't have the aid of kanji when listening to Japanese. Also, onomatopoeia is a really key part of Japanese, particularly spoken, so it's great to be exposed to more of it.

Entertainment

I'm personally quite fond of the story. Sure, it's not the most exciting. But the episodic adventures of Kiki and Jiji are really charming. The narrative style feels equally sweet too.