Novel recommendations for n5/n4 level?

Sorry if there is already a forum about this on this subreddit. Does anyone have any good novel recommendations for beginners? I am open to looking up as many words as needed in the novel.

Can be a kids book if it is really good.

Open to all genres of reading.

5 comments
  1. Not a novel but I do recommend this very cute site aimed at children.

    https://kids.gakken.co.jp/

    Scroll down to 科学なぜなぜ110番 where you will see a bunch of cute pictures – people, dogs, birds, fish, etc. Each of these sections digs into a topic area in kid-friendly language. Many kanji are written out in parentheses or furigana since children of the target audience don’t know them yet or are learning. Click around through any of them until you find a piece of interesting text to dig into.

    It’s a lot of fun to read!

  2. I started reading the『ぼくは王さま』series of books when I was working on N4 material and I think they’re ideal at that stage. Although even now, two years later, whenever I order books from Japan, I still add one of this series to the cart as an easy treat for myself because they’re so much fun to read.

    They’re kids books about a very naughty king who loves eating eggs and lives in a castle and is always getting himself into trouble because doesn’t want to study or hides instead of cleaning. You can get an idea of the type of stories from [this anime version](https://youtu.be/zVU72mrrlxk). They’re in ます/です form so the grammar is fairly easy if you’re coming from textbooks, and because they’re aimed at kids the storyline is very clear and simple, although often surreal enough to test your comprehension.

    The books are made of short stories, most of which are sub-divided into chapters so you can read them in manageable chunks. I think they brought out some new versions recently but the ones illustrated by 和歌山静子 are the best imho.

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