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

ドラゴンボールSD 1

Summary

Dragon Ball SD is a remake of the Dragon Ball manga with SD graphics and simplified text made for very young children.”
“The first four chapters of Dragon Ball SD quickly cover the main story points of the series, jumping straight from Goku’s childhood to the battle on Namek, and then to the Cell Games and the Majin Buu Saga.”
Source

Availability

Print Version:

Ebook:

Personal Opinion

Dragonball brings up childhood memories and this Chibi-Style version gets one excited to dive back into it. It could be a good pick for the absolute beginners book club. All Chapters have 20 pages, which would make it managable to read within 9 weeks. The font-size might be a little small, but it seems sharp and still good readible due to the quality of the print.

Pros and Cons for the Book Club

Pros

  • Beautiful & fully colorized
  • Gorgeous Art Style
  • Furigana

Cons

  • Small font
  • A lot of pages (192)

Pictures

First Three Pages of Chapter One

Table of Contents

Additional Pages








source of 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

6 Likes

Addendum: Bookwalker with Preview

For those lazy enough to not click the link:

First 3 Pages

A couple of pages soon thereafter

3 Likes

That’s better, I’m gonna add it to the post! Thank you @ChristopherFritz :slightly_smiling_face:

Yes! I’ve been eyeing these lovely volumes and I’d love an excuse to buy them.

1 Like

Hmm, what to do about なぜ? There was a strong appetite among those who finished the recent なぜ book to do another one. People particularly liked the format of separate short chapters, so if someone fell behind it was easy to skip some chapters and join the group again. The language was also a nice level for beginners.

I guess we should pick one and put it on the list of nominations. Personally while I enjoyed the two なぜ books I’m more interested in reading a breadth of different books rather than another なぜ book just now.

I’ve looked at the level 3 books and I didn’t think the language looked any harder than the level 2 books we’ve read. I presume it has more kanji, which might even make it easier! So I think a level 2 or level 3 book would be fine for this club. What do others think?

And how to decide which book to put in the nominations? Is a poll to decide which one we nominate taking it too far!!

If the なぜ book doesn’t get selected - people might be interested in an offshoot book club I guess to continue to read なぜ books…

2 Likes

Maybe we could finish off 10分で読める物語 二年生. Not exactly a なぜ, but the same general series.

3 Likes

I’d read another non-science one! Maybe something like biographies for 3rd graders: 10分で読める伝記 3年生

3 Likes

I would love another なぜ! Like you had mentioned it’s nice they are bite sized and can pick back up if needed. If I had to say something I disliked about the last one was that there were some very technical terms that aren’t really relevant to my learning that would trip me up. I don’t have any specific nominations though but would be OK with a level 3. :slight_smile:

2 Likes

Just to add: though there is value in the process, there is, of course, no requirement for books to go through the route of nomination and polling.

If someone really likes a book, wants to run a club, is prepared to do the work of running it and seeing it through to the end, then they can set up a bookclub at any time.

Not all the books in the WK bookclubs were proposed and polled, many were just set up by keen individuals.

Not to say that polling etc is a waste of time, there is some value in the process, but it’s not the only route to making a bookclub.

5 Likes

As someone who doesn’t run clubs but only reads with them, I do appreciate the polls and scheduling in the level-based clubs though – because the scheduling usually lines up nicely, so I don’t end up with too many books at the same time. :slight_smile:

9 Likes

Oh, yes, for sure! (I’m just pointing out that it’s not the only way, and never has been the only way - there is always room for anyone to start a club any time they like too!)

5 Likes

I bought both 10分で読める伝記 2年生 (よみとく10分) and なぜ?どうして?科学のお話3年生 (よみとく10分) when I got レンタルおにいちゃん, but there are so many なぜ? books. I wouldn’t mind trying something new and I’ve been meaning to read Dragon Ball since forever so SD doesn’t seem like a bad way to do it.

I’ll likely join whatever gets picked since the clubs seem to be good for motivation to continue reading and sharing thoughts/translations/problems. I’ll just have to try to stay on top of what is going on since I don’t check the master thread that often, or browse other threads in general.

1 Like

I too will go with the flow since I really like having the community motivation. Compared to レンタルおにいちゃん though, なぜ seems more difficult and maybe why we ended up a small group finishing it. (or were our final numbers normal? I’m new-ish to book club) I still really liked なぜ and felt like I learned a lot reading it.

I’ll write up a separate reply with the nomination template to have one of them thrown in the poll, I’m leaning towards Grade 2 biography since @matthewsa already owns it! The biography chapters from なぜ?科学 were really nice since they had a little bit of dialogue and storytelling.

2 Likes

10分で読める伝記 2年生 (よみとく10分)

Summary

10-Pun de yomeru denki “Biographies” – To read in ten minutes- is a series of reading books for elementary school children in Japan. It is also suitable for students of Japanese who wish to read authentic texts in Japanese.

This book includes twelve short biographies for children such as the life of Osamu Tezuka, Edison or Beethoven, among others.

Since this collection is for children, it only uses high-quality design and content.

The texts are written in a simple yet invigorating way and each story has its own illustration.

Source

Availability

amazon.co.jp
ebookjapan

Personal Opinion

This series is written for Japanese kids so the topics are simple and written in formal Japanese so sentences are clear and easy to read. You’ll learn some cool facts since they are educational books as well. This one is the biography book so it’s people from all over the world. Each chapter is usually only a few pages so with previous books it was easy for people to jump in and out of the schedule.

Pros and Cons for the Book Club

Pros

  • Formal Japanese
  • Short interesting stories
  • Furigana

Cons

  • As it’s more book than manga, lots of sentences
  • Lots of new vocabulary because it isn’t everyday topics
  • Sometime we wished for more kanji!

Pictures

Table of Contents

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

9 Likes

I think these would be really cool to try!

Sorry if this question has already come up and been answered, but how challenging are the next books of Rental Brother? I’m interested in seeing how the rest of the story progresses and it doesn’t seem to be a nomination so I’m assuming it’s probably more difficult?

Oh, tell me about it. And the only difference between them is a single kanji somewhere in the middle of their titles.

2 Likes

They’re about the same as volume 1. The main “difficulty” is the introduction of a recurring character who speaks with a dialect in volume 2.

If there’s enough interest in continuing a series, it gets its own offshoot club, rather than a nomination.

I expect we’ll have more than enough people interested in continuing, especially with it being only four volumes.

6 Likes

Cool, I’d love to see it continued. Thanks!

2 Likes

Could someone with the right privileges update the group title to something like: SELECTING NEXT BOOK//Absolute Beginners Book Club//Currently Reading: Big Brother Rental

5 Likes