こぐまのクーク物語 春と夏

Easy read, with a few caveats

こぐまのクーク物語 春と夏 is a bear cub's juvenile adventures through his childhood, one spring and summer.

The main character, クーク, does what we imagine children do in their day-to-day lives. He explores and learns about the world around him: he plays with his friends, and learns about how to handle such relationships, he wonders together with them about the mechanisms of his experiences, he helps his parents with duties, and he enjoys the food that they prepare.

こぐまのクーク物語 春と夏 is unsurprisingly an easy read. The sentences are short, the grammar and (most of) the vocabulary are simple, and the story is surface-level deep, so there is no fear of things going over your head due to abstractness. There is even ample use of commas, dividing the (already short) sentences into smaller chunks, which also happens to be a good way to get a feel for where it is natural to pause mid-sentence in Japanese.

That being said, there is a fair number of deceptively difficult words, exacerbated by the lack of kanji (to be expected in a children's book). One example is こうさぎ. Only after a moment of staring at it, I realised it should be parsed as うさぎ (rabbit) and こ (prefix expressing a young member of the following animal). There are also frequently uncommon words related to things such as cooking and nature, somewhat frequent references to names of plants and animals that you likely haven't heard before, and lots of onomatopoeia.

I don't regret reading this, but if you are looking to solidify the Japanese you already know, and build your reading speed, I would look elsewhere.