Hi all! I just finished level 5 and very proud! I gave up on WaniKani and came back to it a year later. I wonder why the kanji is not taught in the order of the most frequent kanji first on WaniKani because I find that would help us improve our reading abilities faster.
Anyway, it is what it is and I’m happy that at least at level 5, I am almost at JLPT5 and Grade 1. Are there any Grade 1/Grade 2 books in Japanese that anyone can recommend for reading? I don’t mind children books of course! Thank you in advance!
Have a look around 無料の読みもの – にほんごたどく . If Level 1 is too hard for you (I don’t think so) go to Level 0. If level 1 is too easy, go to level 2.
That’s the easiest entry I can recommend in semi natural material.
Grade 1 books will have many words that are known by schoolchildren, which you will probably have never heard of in Japanese. Common household stuff like a vase or some such…
If you really prefer native material I recommend taking a look at Absolute Beginners Book Club // Now reading: Hunter × Hunter especially the Stories of the Japanese Prefectures (Absolute Beginner Book Club) might be up your ally and is definitely easier to tackle with the help of the book club thread.
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Doraemon manga might be good!
There’s also this site: https://storyweaver.org.in/search?language=Japanese
Happy reading!
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I understand the sentiment, but anyone asking should be made to create the ordering and then defend the inevitable arguments. 
This depends entirely on the corpus you use to measure the frequency. Kids books, newspapers, horror manga, and doctoral theses would give different results. Literally any ordering will cause disagreements.
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Satori Reader, or Graded Readers are probably gonna be best. If you like games, you should also check out Pokemon or Dragon Quest. Manga wise, I recommend Doraemon or something from コロコロ. Books are harder to get into without pictures or a lot of word knowledge so I’ll end my suggestions there for now.
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I don’t know about 1st grade and 2nd grade material, but I feel your best bet would be reading graded readers and a manga called Crystal Hunters (which teaches you Japanese.)
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Tadoku has some free books that might suit? They have ones at different levels, not just total beginner. Some links and other suggestions here Some non-fiction absolute beginner reading suggestions
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