Children's books

[Tamachan87]

I was wondering if anyone could recommend any decent Japanese children's books? I've attempted pitifully to translate a few mangas I brought back off holiday but some contain far too much slang or have teeny weeny furigana that I can barely see.

Just to make clear: I'm looking for books written for Japanese children, not books on Japan for English speaking children.

[jazzbeans]

http://www.sasugabooks.com/index.php?cPath=1_285

- Children's picture books. =)

[Taurus]

There's a fairly famous book called Gongitsune. You can actually find it as a text file online, I think.

But I find kids' books difficult to read because of all the kana. It makes it difficult to look up words that you don't understand...

[cmwatkins]

A couple of my personal favorites are "Guri to Gura" (by Nakagawa Rieko & Oomura Yuriko), and "Oshiire no Naka no Mikotan" (the author's name escapes me). Are these suggestions skewed a bit young, Tamachan? Not sure if you were looking for picture books or something more akin to young readers books. These are sort of on the line, but short enough to fall on the young side.

[gerald_ford]

As my daughter is 2 years old, my wife whose Japanese, has bought a couple series of books that I highly recommend. The first is "Nontan", which is a very, very intro-level series of books about a small white cat named Nontan and his friends. I've seen them sold in Japanese Bookstores on the West Coast among other places. They're quite popular among Japanese too and have been for generations.

For a little more advanced reading, check out the "Kogumachan" series which features a small little girl bear named Kogumachan. I like these books as they are a bit more challenging to read, but really, really cute stories. The artwork is priceless I think. This too is easy to find outside of Japan alongside Nontan, and is also well-known among Japanese.

Best of luck.

[cmwatkins]

We have a couple Nontan books, and I'd second General Ford's recommendation there!

[melitu]

Not exactly an answer to your question... but there's a podcast that does readings of children's books. What's great is that they have a link to the full text of whatever story they're reading =D (just look for the linked "こちら" in the post)
http://fantajikan.tea-nifty.com/blog/

If you're browsing with Firefox with rikaichan installed, it makes looking up any unfamiliar words easy, too.

Right now they're in the middle of reading a Japanese translation of "The Little Prince". Some of the earlier ones are much shorter (and easier) stories.