The Problem with Reading Japanese Children’s Books

DISCLAIMER: This is general advice targeted towards those who are learning Japanese as a foreign language. This may not apply to you if you are either (a) already highly proficient in Japanese or (b) truly in love with children’s books. Please keep in mind that this is just the opinion of one Japanese educator.

As someone with a child, I have read more than my fair share of children’s books in Japanese. Just to give you an idea, I stopped counting when we had read over 300 books together. These books cover the entire range, from the most basic picture books with one word per page to mini novels made for young elementary schoolers. And don’t get me wrong—I love reading kids' books.

But there are two important caveats here. First, I love reading children’s books because I get to experience them through the eyes of my child. Even if I read a kid’s book alone, I can still enjoy the experience because I already appreciate the child’s perspective. Second, and crucially, I already have a native-level grasp of Japanese, so my reading is not hindered by a struggle to understand the language.

For those of you considering reading Japanese children’s books to improve your studies, however, I have a few good reasons why you should reconsider.

Children’s Books Just Aren’t Interesting to Most Adults

Unless you're a parent or simply never grew out of reading picture books, chances are you will find reading children’s books in Japanese extremely dull. You’ve probably heard it a million times already from language learning gurus, but it’s critical during your studies to engage with content that genuinely interests you. Let’s face it, books written for five-year-olds are generally not going to be intellectually stimulating or interesting to an adult.

Even if the content you choose is a bit more challenging, it makes much more sense to choose something you’re actually interested in rather than choosing something just because you think it will be easier. Which brings us to our next point.

Reading Children’s Books is Not as Easy as You Might Hope

Despite what many people expect, children’s books tend to be more linguistically complex than you think. "How is that possible?" you might ask. "They must be easy to understand; they’re for young children, after all!"

Yes, they are easy for native speaking children to understand. But remember, they are easy for native speakers. While you may have memorized advanced vocabulary that a Japanese child doesn't know, like economics, infrastructure, prime minister, or domain expansion, native children will have a much better grasp on the general, fundamental structure of the language.

Not only that, but they are full of words you skip in standard study materials. Words from daily life like acorn, pot, tiptoe, and apron are words every native child knows, but they don’t often come up in Japanese textbooks.

We also have to take into consideration the way these books play with language. They often feature characters speaking in non-standard dialects (especially in folktales) or use made-up, nonsense words to convey sound or mood. Imagine someone learning English who comes across "boobidibibbidibop," "Hickory Dickory Dock," or Dr. Seuss's "wocket." As a native speaker, you immediately know those are nonsense words, but a language learner might find themselves frustrated, endlessly flipping through dictionaries trying to find words that don't actually exist.

Reading Children’s Books Can Be Demotivating

Presumably, you decided to try children’s books because you thought it would be a relatively easy task, giving you a confidence boost that you can read authentic material. The reality, however, is that many learners end up actually losing confidence after attempting them. I don’t know how many students I’ve seen who have given up halfway through and concluded to themselves, “If I can’t even get through this, I’m never going to be able to work through real books...”

That’s completely blown out of proportion. It’s normal to have several years of serious language study under your belt and still struggle to fully understand children’s books. Part of this is due to the linguistic reasons mentioned above, but another aspect is that the brevity of children’s books can actually work against your comprehension.

If you were reading a novel and didn’t understand one sentence on the page, you wouldn’t think much of it—it’s just a small part of a large context. With children’s books, however, you may only have one or two sentences per page. If you don't understand that single sentence, you may be missing a significant portion of the story! This is why, counterintuitively, it can sometimes feel easier and make us more confident to read longer, more challenging works. If you only understand half of a novel, you’re still getting around 150 pages of content that you do understand, which feels like a win. If you only understand half of a picture book, you might feel defeated because you only could follow 5 out of 10 pages.

Improving Your Reading is About Massive Exposure (Low ROI)

At the beginning of this post, I mentioned that I have read well over 300 children’s books. The thing is, 300 children’s books is still probably less written content than you would find in the content of one or two full-length novels. The point is that the return on investment (ROI) you get for your time and/or money in reading children’s books just isn’t worth it if your goal is improving your Japanese.

It may come as a surprise, but picture books often cost more than novels or manga. Depending on the title, you can typically buy two to three "grown-up" books for the price of a single children’s book. Unless you have unlimited access to Japanese children’s books at a local library, it is not economically viable to improve your Japanese via this method.

Reading content which is actually targeted at your age not only will be more interesting and more likely to contain vocabulary which is relevant to your daily life, but it will also give you sufficient exposure to start truly making a difference in your Japanese proficiency.