The WaniKani community hosts an Absolute Beginners Book Club, which mostly reads manga but sometimes children’s stories. (We just started Yotsuba a few weeks ago.)
At one point, I gathered up my recommendations to first-time readers and assembled them into a post here:
Even if you don’t join a book club, you can read through everything on there before the “Participating in the Absolute Beginner Book Club” heading, and it’ll be applicable.
The basic rundown is:
- Learn hiragana and (at least somewhat) katakana. Let WaniKani help you out with the kanji.
- Learn some common vocabulary words.
- Learn basic grammar.
- Start reading by not reading; pick something you’d like to read, and start picking it apart:
- Look up any vocabulary words and grammar you don’t know or recognize (which will be a lot to begin with).
- Focus on learning the vocabulary and grammar if they are common. If you see them come up a few times, you’ll know they’re common.
Expect your initial reading experiences to be a form of study and learning until you have basic vocabulary memorized and basic grammar learned.