I feel that children's stories don't get enough credit - people talk about them like they're at-best training wheels before you can read 'real' novels. Always makes me a little sad.
So let's have a thread to talk about Japanese children's literature. What authors and novels have you discovered? What's easy and what's challenging?

I'm on my 44th novel, the second book of the 蒼き戦記 series. It's pretty cool stuff - as the name implies it's a war story in a fantasy setting, but it feels a lot more grounded than a lot of fantasy. I don't think I've read a fantasy novel where the scale of things seems so deliberately parred back - the protagonists are fighting for the sake of a small, rather unimportant mountain kingdom made up of a handful of villages against an unremarkable military kingdom. The closest things get to magic is the protagonist being able to talk to a giant bird. Pretty refreshing after so much gonzo epic fantasy with the world at stake.
It's easy reading too. Not for beginners, but if you think you have a decent shot at N3 you can probably read it. The writing style is remarkably clear - there are quite a few uncommon words but it feels like they're always used in a way that makes it obvious what they are. I just learnt the word for 'weir', which I doubt gets into many frequency lists...


Or quite a while ago I read ハンカチの上の花畑, which I'd happily recommend to anyone. The cover makes it look like maybe the least offensive thing in the world, but there's serious themes and social commentary running through it. You could turn it into a good horror movie, even.
It's easy, too. There's not much specialist vocabulary involved except a few things about sake - but nothing that impedes understanding much if you've got the basics.


竜が呼んだ娘 has a very cool, unique setting where isolated human settlements are only connected by those who can fly - i.e. dragons and witches. Really good fantasy - gives that feeling of what another world based on different principles would be like.
I've read 地下室からのふしぎな旅 by the same author and have a bunch of other stuff by her on my backlog. Still need to make another crack at 霧のむこうのふしぎな町though after my first two attempts failed to make much headway. Wouldn't recommend any of these for people just getting started in reading - they can be a bit dense.

Anyway, that's just a few of the good things I've read so far.
This thread is good for talking about anything relevant to children's books.　Recommendations are always welcome - my backlog can never be long enough.

Thank you for making this thread and thank you for sending me on a path that would have me pay $24 on a 1200円 book...

As far as recommendations go... I guess I'd recommend the Magic Treehouse books, especially for new readers. Though I prefer the originals to the Japanese versions, both are a great way to get into reading while being very entertaining (for new reader books anyway); even better, you can get a lot of them used for 1円 (plus shipping, of course) on Amazon, but good luck getting all of them in the same shipment (I didn't feel like spending hours optimizing an order, which is why my order was $24 instead of $36 or more; 800円 per shipment?! 400円 per book?! What kind of racket is this?! So I gave up and just got the one book for now).

Great thread idea! I'll recommend 獣の奏者 for those who like fantasy. It takes place in a world where they raise dragon-like creatures as beasts of war. It's four volumes and reminds me a bit of Harry Potter.

I liked テレパシー少女蘭. The characters were likable, the plots were interesting, and overall, I enjoyed every book I read. 9 volumes, complete, and available on Kindle, too.

Crap, I want to read some of these now, especially 獣の奏者, but I have a huge pile of shame to go through first.

Oh, I forgot to mention something nice about 獣の奏者. If you Google random nonsense words like 獣の奏者 jpddl txt, all at once, you might completely randomly find something useful.

Always glad to do damage to someone's wallet.

Some more cool books:

Well, there's a lot of stuff in the ふたごの魔法つかい series, which I'd recommend to anyone as a good place to start reading. Really easy with limited vocabulary, but they all tell good fantasy adventure stories.
Specifically I'd like to recommend 風と火の国. These books are written for kids in the lower levels of primary school but I don't think I've ever read a book for that age group about genocide before. It's seriously not a happy story - well worth reading especially if you're finding your options for that reading level stuff filled with rainbows and fairies.
The other ふたごの魔法つかい books aren't quite that hardcore but they're all serious stories rather than fluff. 人魚のうた　is creepy, 銀のつばさ is trippy. Most of them read like an epic fantasy adventure story but slimmed down to the essentials.

らくだい魔女 is another series worth checking out. It is fluff though, but I like to fill in between more serious and difficult stories with something that's familiar and doesn't involve too much thought. I wouldn't say it's for very beginners - it's a bit too free with the vocabulary.
Basically, if you want a fun, well-paced adventure story without a whole lot of depth, this is a good place to look.

I really liked 夜の学校. I'm a big fan of fantasy where there's just one magic thing that's changed and how that affects things. Here the magical thing is a world-swapping lighthouse in the middle of a grassy field sending the protagonist to night school. Not sure I'd recommend it to anyone and everyone, but if you like 'children's fantasy' as a genre it's pretty good.