Absolute Beginners Book Club // Now Reading: Granny Girl Hinata chan!

Options are scored so:

1 - no effort at all
2 - minimal effort
3 - just right
4 - challenging
5 - impossible

Then an average is taken of the votes. So for example, three people voting ‘minimal effort’ and two people voting ‘just right’ would give a difficulty of 2.4

2 Likes

I have it both in English and Japanese, so yes. I do the same with most of my favorite mangas (have double all of Naruto, Death Note, Chi’s Sweet Home, Attack on Titan, as well as some shorter ones that have never been mentioned in either book clubs)

That seems like it’s rather hard or close to impossible for people to buy. The amazon page you linked only has a single used copy of the set, and I don’t see it anywhere else for sale. Maybe it can be found in bookoff and the like, but that’s probably not practical for most people.

They are available one and one though, at 380 Yen. So we could use them either as a selection and go through all, or a book or two and only do more if people liked them enough to do more.

I’ll make the amazon link to the first book =)

1 Like

Ask Publishing Graded Readers
レベル別日本語多読ライブラリー レベル0 vol.1

List of books included

Summary
Short stories tailored to foreigners trying to learn Japanese. Level 0 is for people with a vocabulary up to 400, and minimal grammar. Level 1 is 400 - 1500 vocab knowledge and N5 grammar. There are three sets of each level, and we might be able to handle level 2 as well ( 1500-2500, N4 grammar)
Since this is tailored to students of Japanese language, we get easier grammar than any First Grade book, easier vocab use and avoid the “wall of kana” since they use kanji with furigana.

Set 1 has 6 books, 15 pages each. First two are informative (about cherry blossoms and soy), while the last 4 are fictional stories (fun and whimsical, slice of life)

Availability
Amazon JP

No eBook to my knowledge. The eBook version of Graded Readers by White Rabbit are written by same people (I believe they said in the forum), but I can confirm they are not the same stories.

Personal Opinion
Being tailored to beginners they are easy to pick up and read, and give you a great satisfaction of being able to read something completely in Japanese. The stories are quite interesting as well. I like to read again every now and then, as they are easy enough to just pick up and read, and written in a way so you are supposed to pick up new vocab and grammar from context, so I learn more each time even without looking things up.

Pros and Cons for the Book Club

Pros

  • Includes CD
  • Easy language
  • Tailored to students
  • No wall of Kana
  • 6 separate stories, people can jump in at any time
  • Illustrations tailored even more to comprehension than regular books does

Cons

  • Price. Cost more than mass produced books
  • Lvl 0 Possibly too easy, but this is the absolute beginner :wink: (we can always go higher)

Pictures

First Three Pages of Chapter One

Additional Pages

Difficulty Poll
How much effort would you need to read this book?

  • No effort at all
  • Minimal effort
  • Just right
  • Challenging
  • Impossible, even with everyone’s help
  • I don’t know (please click this if you’re not voting seriously)

0 voters

White Rabbit Graded Readers

List of available stories




Summary
Short stories tailored to foreigners trying to learn Japanese.
Since this is tailored to students of Japanese language, we get easier grammar than any First Grade book, easier vocab use and avoid the “wall of kana” since they use kanji with furigana. (and the furigana can be toggled too! )

They also promised more stories are on the way, but not sure when they will become available.

Availability
Apple and Android:

No Physical version

Personal Opinion
Being tailored to beginners they are easy to pick up and read, and give you a great satisfaction of being able to read something completely in Japanese. The stories are quite interesting as well. I like to read again every now and then, as they are easy enough to just pick up and read, and written in a way so you are supposed to pick up new vocab and grammar from context, so I learn more each time even without looking things up.

The first two stories are my absolute favorites of anything I have in Japanese, and read them again just cause I enjoy them so much!

Pros and Cons for the Book Club

Pros

  • Includes soundtrack
  • Easy language
  • Tailored to students
  • No wall of Kana
  • Separate stories, people can jump in at any time
  • Illustrations tailored even more to comprehension than regular books does
  • The creators are in the forum and listens to feedback and suggestions
  • Furigana can now be toggled (cause we asked for it!)

Cons

  • No physical version

Pictures

First Three Pages of Chapter One

Additional Pages

First page with and without Furigana (to show the difference) The sound can also be hidden with a flick of the finger.

Difficulty Poll
How much effort would you need to read this book?

  • No effort at all
  • Minimal effort
  • Just right
  • Challenging
  • Impossible, even with everyone’s help
  • I don’t know (please click this if you’re not voting seriously)

0 voters

1 Like

Sounds great! Thank you for proposing this Saruko!

1 Like

All of your nominations break the formatting of the template. I wonder what you’re doing for that to happen every time. :joy:

1 Like

I never got the formatting to work (got a completely broken post… ^^; ), so I just put the elements together without the formatting

Copying and pasting it directly doesn’t work?

That’s what I did. But I messed it up somehow, so gave up and just removed the formatting and kept the elements

Weird. :man_shrugging:

1 Like

I probably managed to mess it up while editing, but it was too much work to re-do, so I just removed all the formatting to make it work, and next time went from that post as I found it easier to work with

By the way, I made a user script that automatically adds scores to polls.
It’s a bit quirky, in the sense that it needs the data of the poll to be fully loaded when the page is ready (so it won’t work for polls you haven’t voted in, or polls that only appear when you scroll past the posts discourse had pre-loaded).
The way I use it is to click on the post that contains the poll I want to check (anywhere is okay, it should update the url to that of the post) then reload the page :stuck_out_tongue:
Link: Poll tally
Example:

3 Likes

Have a few more I could nominate, but will save them for later. (not later today, some other time, much later)

There’s another Graded Reader, would chose set 8 (as it has two 0 books and four 1 books, set 1 is a mix up to lvl 2)

But I haven’t received them yet, would like to see them before making an official nomination.

I also have a book of 90 fairytales, used to be in the Beginner Book club, but was before we made the advanced nominations, so “the work” hasn’t been done, I don’t feel like doing more right now =P

I also have two other sets of fairy tales, but I like the one I suggested the most.

I also have a 1st grader “10 minutes stories”, but we already have a suggestion in that category, I don’t mind it being a different book of the same series =)

Ok… I think it’s time to call it. I’m getting all the nominations and creating a poll.
So far I have only added 3 in the OP… if someone is kind enough to edit it and add the new ones…

2 Likes

Wouldn’t it be easier to make nominations in the OP as links to the post itself? And it wouldn’t take as much space. I would love to help too:3

2 Likes

So edit the OP with the Poll there?

I can do that.

I’m not sure what you mean exactly :sweat_smile: I think maybe do something like in Beginner Japanese Book Club, where the nomitanations are just “Name of the Book” as a hyper link to the post where it was nominated:) It’s also easier for people to vote and see the opinion of others

2 Likes

Ok, I added the poll to the main OP.
I might be edit it a little bit, adding a “naze” book here or there…