Hey guys,

As part of my research into extensive reading, I've come across two series of graded readers in Japanese, レベル別日本語多読ライブラリー and にほんご多読ブックス, but do you guys know about any others? I'd like to persuade my university to buy a variety of different sets for students to use, and since everyone finds different things appealing to read, I'd like to try to get the biggest variety possible. I've been googling around, but I haven't come up with any other collections so far. We have a reasonable number of "actual" Japanese novels in the library, so I'm more looking for graded reader style things, perhaps aimed at JFL learners (or not), any suggestions are welcome!!

Thank you

[Zgarbas]

When i was a beginner I found penguin's collection of japanese short stories really useful.

Ah, but those are only in parallel text, right? It's better if they're in Japanese only, but thanks for the suggestion

The １０分で読めるお話 series discussed here is not aimed at L2 learners, but it is graded by elementary school level, and is really good.

Thanks, having a look through now

Are there really no other Japanese graded readers out there?

Besides those two you mentioned, there are:

1. http://sisj.blog91.fc2.com/blog-entry-322.html from people of Sendai

2. Oxford Graded Readers: http://hss.brookes.ac.uk/news/2013/09/26...-japanese/

I only have experience ordering from tadoku.org though. Hope this helps!

Ok, thanks. It doesn't look like all 6 envisioned levels for the Brookes ones have been published, hopefully they will in the future!

Any more suggestions, guys?

I don't really like for-foreigners material so I have always tried to read books for native Japanese children. If you look at Japanese book sites you will often get a chance to browse inside the book. Here is an example.

http://www.tsubasabunko.jp/bookdetails/?...1502000286

Beneath the picture of the book is a pink button labeled 立ち読み (standing and reading as one sometimes does in a Japanese bookshop). This allows you to read the beginning of the book and see how it measures up to your level. As you'll see, this one has full furigana. You can dip a lot of books like this to find which ones you might like and be able to read.

NOTE: The pages are a bit small and the enlarging doesn't seem to work. Here is the same book on another site:

http://bookwalker.jp/de7b00ca11-0556-41c...nt=7qM_Nkp

This time the trial button is in the sidebar: it is blue and labeled 試し読み (trial read). The magnifying function on this reader works properly so you can see the pages at a larger size.

Cool, thanks!

I know some people prefer authentic materials from the beginning, and that's cool

Full furigana is really helpful, because although most of us did heisig, and have no trouble with kanji, it's a little bit harder to convince students not majoring in Japanese to invest that time up front in learning kanji (even rtk lites, etc).

So, searching around the nihongo tadoku books site a bit more, I found this huge list of books from Levels 0-5 that you guys might really find useful. I don't know if they're all easily available, either from amazon, or online stores, or your local bookshops, but here you go!
All nicely categorised by level

http://tadoku.org/learners/book_ja/reference

here is an explanation of the levels, and what grammar they use:

レベル 語彙(vocab) 字数／１話(characters/story) 主な文法項目(grammar)
0入門
Starter
語彙350　　字数／１話～400
現在形、過去形、疑問詞、～たい　など
※基本的に「です・ます体」だけを使っています。

1初級前半
Beginner
語彙350　　数／１話400～1500
現在形、過去形、疑問詞、～たい　など
※「です・ます体」だけを使っています。

2初級後半
Upper-Beginner
語彙500 字数／１話1500～2500
辞書形、て形、ない形、た形、連体修飾、～と（条件）、～から（理由)、～なる、～のだ　など

3初中級
Lower-Intermediate
語彙800 字数／１話2500～5000
可能形、命令形、受身形、意向形、～とき、～たら・ば・なら、～そう（様態）、～よう（数量・比喩、複合動詞 など

4中級
Intermediate
語彙1300 字数／１話5000～10000
使役形、使役受身形、～そう（伝聞）、～らしい、～はず、～もの、～ようにする／なる、～ことにする／なる　など

5中上級
Upper-Intermediate or above
語彙2000 字数／１話8000～20000
機能語・複合語・慣用表現・敬語など
例）～わけにはいかない/～につれて/切り開く/召し上がる/伺う

from this page:
http://tadoku.org/learners/book_ja