Correction: people are trying to jump right from Yotsuba to Kiki. 
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Thank you, but I struggled through よつばと！vol.1, it was tough work (although also great fun)!
There’s no way I could do Kiki right now (though I’d love to!). I’m better off using the next six months to study and to do a bit of preparatory reading of vols 2 and 3.
Thanks though! 
When you realize you’ve spent ten minutes trying to figure out what the first line says, and it turns out to be a simple ‘story starts’ 
Thanks for the collaborative vocab stuff everyone!! It’s been really helpful. Having said that - it is expected that people around my level will have to use something like google translate? I’m having trouble with knowing where the words end since it’s a lot of hiragana… any advice would be really appreciated!
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I hope you don’t need to fall back to google translate… 
Anyways, I totally agree that it is hard to figure out the individual words. I usually try to use some heuristics for this, like:
- a kanji usually marks the start of a word
- if you find は、が、に、で、etc. after a kanji, that’s often a particle and does not belong to the next word. Sometimes there are two particles in a row, e.g. には.
- When you find a verb ending, like ます、て、etc. then you can work your way backwards from there.
- From what’s left, I try to enter some hiragana into jisho.org and see if something can be found - then I try to extend or shorten the word I am searching for.
Sorry if this sounds overly simplistic, this is just my way of trying to make some sense from a text when I don’t know the vocabulary.
I am aware that many of these suggestions can be totally wrong and misleading in some situations - please take them with a grain of salt 
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A good trick that I use some times when I am unsure, is to just type in a whole sentence or the chunk you are unsure about into Jisho.org. and search. It usually ends up separating the words pretty well for you.
Oh crap…just noticed NicoleRauch mentioned this in her more comprehensive and useful answer…
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I’ve really fallen behind with this one. With よつばと！ I raced ahead, but with this one I’m about half way through the second page. Grammar and vocab are a big problem, but the main problem is just lack of time. Over Christmas I’ve just gotten more and more busy (working, studying for exams, etc.) so I’ve only managed around a sentence everyday. Hopefully after this next week, I’ll be able to put an afternoon aside to catch up.
Great idea. Please add me to the member list!
(First post on the boards. Hello everyone!)
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Can you add me? I’ve had the book for years, now’s a great time to start reading it.
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Added 
Could you also add me, please?
A few weeks ago I coincidentally picked up the book while on vacation. Started last week as I saw the community thread. Now onto chapter 2! 
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Is anyone else finding themselves looking up a ton of words? I know almost all of the kanji (yay!) but there are so many words I don’t know. It makes reading the book kind of a drag because I get taken out of the story so much.
I find it helpful to read through a page or two and just mark the words I don’t know with a pencil but try to get the gist of what is going on, then go back and look up words. Or if I’m looking up words as I go, then I try to re-read it afterwards with my translated words in place.
I have a lot of pencil markings on these pages! But the second read through always makes a lot more sense! 
I just add in an extra line if there is vocab I want to add to the list! The more the merrier (especially if you don’t have to do it all yourself!)
But I feel like I’m missing so many words that oftentimes I don’t understand the sentence at all without looking things up! Also, I refuse to write in my book haha. I should probably try to read slightly longer passages before looking things up though.
Has anyone made a Chapter 3 discussion yet?
Oops, forgot to put it in this thread’s OP 
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I find the kanji use in the book to be odd. It uses kanji for words like 柳、枝、煙突 but it spells 作る and 飛び出す in only kana.
I just purchased this book and look forward to reading it! Please add me to the reading list. I’m hoping to make my way through the first page today. Hopefully I can catch up with everyone else!
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ようこそ! 
I added you
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So I just finished my school semester and am desperately trying to catch up with you guys and Kiki, I just finished the first chapter.
Can we still post questions on the related thread even though it’s supposedly done?