Level 2 Japanese Children’s Books from Nikkei Bunko

This is an incomplete list of all the Level 2 books available from Nikkei Bunko, a Japanese-language library operated by the Japanese Cultural and Community Center of Washington; it’ll be updated as I keep reading them.

From Extensive Reading in Japanese, the definition of a Level 2 book:

Level 2: Mainly hiragana and katakana text. If there are kanji, furigana is given for each kanji. The text is longer but still contains a lot of pictures to aid student comprehension. Japanese native readers would be five to eight years old.

I’ve added Amazon links for the benefit of having title images and just in case anyone wants to subsidize my reading, but if you’re interested in ordering any of these, I’d also recommend you look them up on Kinokuniya’s website or YesAsia.com and compare prices and shipping costs. They may also be available at a library near you or be available through inter-library loan; you can look them up at WorldCat.org. Also, all title translations are my own unless otherwise indicated, names are family name first, then given name, and 作 and 絵 mean “author” and “illustrator,” respectively.

１００万回生きたねこ
The Cat with a Million Lives
作／絵：佐野 洋子（さの ようこ, Sano Yōko）
Level 2 絵本, 31 pages, 750 words (est.) ★★★★★ Hardcover

This book was recommended to me by a couple of people on lang-8, and quite a few people using 読書メーター (Reading Meter) have read it, so you could consider it one of those thoughtful, classic picture books that appeals to adults, and would therefore be a good book for an extensive reading collection. The cat of the title has lived a million lives, and been mourned by a million owners; he’s never cried once.

いっすんぼうし
The One-Inch Boy
作：長谷川 彰（はせがわ あきら, Hasegawa Akira）
絵：金山 通弘（かなやま みちひろ, Kanayama Michihiro）
Level 2 絵本, 48 pages, 600 words (est.) ★★★☆☆ Hardcover

I don’t know why I felt the need to revisit this story — I guess I’m just a sucker for fairy tales. So-so pictures for this one, but more details compared to the version I read before.