Looking for Japanese equivalent of N4-N5 BrainQuest workbooks.

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1. I own the yellow one! Not sure it’s comparable to BrainQuest don’t know that series well but this is not really a ‘workbook’ per se, it’s a ‘general knowledge’/get smarter/reading encouragement type book (I guess a reader?) aimed at Elementary School students where each page covers one ‘topic’ in an easy to read/illustrated format (from areas like History, Culture, Nature, etc.).

   The concept is to read one page a day, over a year (366 for an extra), and grow your knowledge while you improve your reading skills. It’s also grouped in ‘weekly’ themes, but I recall from the introduction you are free to read as you like.

   Activity wise there are just tiny A B or C style quizzes (which are actually the intro to the info tidbit not really a test) and ‘read aloud’ encouragement so apart from filling in the date at the top to keep your progress I don’t think there’s anything else to fill out. At least not in the yellow one.

   So while not a ‘workbook’ this book is really excellent for practicing reading (and reading aloud) and as general comprehensible input. It’s very easy to read, I would say N4 but really it’s not a JLPT book so it can serve you well throughout any ‘Elementary’ phase of your studies. It’s illustrated and has cartoon characters to represent subjects and they give you hints!

   Lastly I’m unsure but I believe there are three volumes and they go Yellow, Blue, Red. But could be wrong about the order, and don’t know, but I don’t think they are different difficulty levels just more ‘Knowledge!’.