Encouraging our daughter's Japanese practice

My daughter is at pre-school here in Japan, and each week she gets assigned a book to take home and practice reading with. It’s become a nightly routine for my husband to read the assigned book with her, and for many of those books she’s become quite attached to them. For several, we've ended up sourcing the books online to add to our own book collection!

Something that I find amazing about Japan is the quality of second hand books here. A couple of the assigned books from her school that we tried to source were only available as second hand online, and were listed as being in “good” condition - but honestly, to me they just looked brand new.

Here are a couple of her favorites right now. This one is absolutely hilarious in my opinion! It’s called トイレとうきゅう, and it's about a young boy's imagination when he wakes up in the morning and needs to use the toilet. It gives us quite a few laughs!

The next one on heavy rotation in our house right now is ちいさいしょうぼうじどうしゃ. This book is about a firefighter and his little fire engine as they go to save a family's home. It explains firefighters and their equipment in a way children can understand.

The last title that we've been reading a lot lately is くさはらの わたしの へや. It's about the author's return to her own childhood, where she gives a view of life in Japan's countryside. 

We particularly love this one in our house because the author and illustrator is from Niigata! A lot of the pictures remind us of how the landscape looks out here in the inaka, so I guess we're a bit sentimental about it for that reason.

Are there any Japanese children’s books that your little ones have particularly enjoyed? I’d love to get some recommendations to add to our home collection if you’re willing to share!