[Welcome to the EL Book Introductions series. These posts are all short (<180 words) introductions/reviews of books in the EL library. They focus on telling you what we think will be interesting for you, a college student and English learner, so use them to help you find the right book for you. You can also use the tags to find books about topics you might be interested in.]
_______
Like the My Neighbor Totoro and Castle in the Sky comic books I introduced before, Kiki’s Delivery Service is a great way to “learn what you already know.” In other words, it is much easier to read a book you already know about (the story, the characters, etc.) than something that is completely new. Since you probably have seen the Ghibli movie, the book it is based on should be an easy read.
On the other hand, in my opinion, this book is much better than the Ghibli comic books. The comics have very little English, and follow the movie exactly. This book has very few pictures and is actually different from the movie in many ways. The writing is clear and easy to understand, and each chapter is broken into smaller sections. Having lots of little breaks (区切り) gives you easy goals for how much to read at a time. In addition, the book is made up of lots of short (often funny) stories, so you can choose whatever chapter looks interesting and start reading from there.
My two cents: This book was a delight to read. I got a very different image of Kiki and her world than from watching the movie.
