☄ Week 8 | ムーミン谷の彗星 | Children's Novel Club

Japanese Language Book Clubs
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:shooting_star: Welcome to week 8 of ムーミン谷の彗星！:shooting_star:

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Week 8 Apr 11
Chapter 4
Pages with text ~16
Ending Point End of chapter

Discussion Guidelines

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Participation Poll
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2

It’s nice when a chapter lines up with a week. :ok_hand:

Does anyone know what the kanji vs hiragana logic is for this book? It sometimes seems a bit random which kanji are used and which aren’t. But that’s just based purely on me thinking “huh if that had used the kanji I would have known it” and “I’ve never seen that kanji before” in approximately equal measure haha. Actually in general there’s a looot of vocab I don’t know here so lots of lookups. I enjoy deciphering the more interesting descriptions.

Story thoughts

I enjoyed reading about all the academics running around and the vastly different reactions to Sniff and Moomintroll. I’m willing to bet a fair amount of money that there was some misunderstanding happening, and some assumptions being misinterpreted by our intrepid adventurers. I look forward to seeing what happens in a few days time…

3

I’ve read a lot of children’s books and I find the logic to be pretty mysterious to be honest. I’ve seen some people hypothesize that it’s connected to a kanji’s grade level somehow and only lower grade kanji are included, but I don’t agree with that, because then why would 峰 be on the first page of the chapter when it’s a kanji taught in junior high :joy: I really think it just depends on the publisher and they all do things differently in some mysterious way.

It seems that each sentence ends up with some kind of balance between hiragana and kanji-spelled words- note that no sentence is fully kanji spellings, and likewise none are fully hiragana-ified (except maybe a few short sentences). So maybe the edict is just ‘there should be a mix’ and otherwise publishers do whatever.

I’ve also found that this book includes some interesting vocab. On the first page of the chapter, I wasn’t sure if I’d seen あくる朝 (meaning the next morning) before. Other weak points for me are animal/plant names and geographical features. (ワシ、the aforementioned 峰).

Story thoughts: Wow, Sniff was actually useful for once! It’s starting to get a bit creepy with the red sky and imminent impact of the comet. :face_with_spiral_eyes: My favorite illustration was the telescope.

4

I hadn’t thought about this but that makes sense. Prioritises flow of reading and assumes most people will be able to pick up / infer / ask about any kanji that are slightly beyond what they’ve learnt in school. If you’re already a confident speaker this approach probably actually helps teach more kanji ha.