Children's Books in Japanese?

[Banianna]

I know there are many manga that are great for this but I mainly come across the teen-oriented stuff that is more likely to have slang and involved language. Anyone know of any children's classics that they'd recommend for someone who would like to crunch more easy and introductory vocabulary?

Thank you very much in advance!

[megshoe]

Here's a link to a website with collections of children's books in many languages, including Japanese:

http://www.childrensbooksforever.com/childrenpages/Japanese.html

There's only a few in Japanese, and I doubt they'd be considered classics, but I think it's a good place to start, especially if you're looking for new vocab!

[Lasonax]

Here are 16 children books, they're 100% hiragana though, so it might be a bit challenging to read it. But well, all/most children books are bound to have mostly hiragana anyway, and I suppose you already know that.

http://life.ou.edu/stories/

Good luck!

[Miya]

Interesting! I can read Kanji fine, but I'm going to try reading these Hiragana stories anyway XD

[ang.diwata]

Thanks for these! Can certainly use these for practice! 

[OddVisions]

I'm going to try the 16 stories since some of them seem to come with translations under them. I'll read them out to myself first in Japanese, then in English. In regards to this and the thread starter, I suggest the tale of Peach Boy. As far as I know, this is one of the more popular books for Japanese Children to read; which means it should have an easy to comprehend vocabulary for beginners.

[JapanGuy]

This isn't exactly what you're asking for, but I'm going to recommend it anyway: Japanese Graded Readers. These are books written specifically for learners of Japanese. They are not going to use baby talk or weird words that only Japanese children know. Japanese Graded Readers They even have iPad versions if you don't want the physical editions. I have volumes 1, 2, 3, and 4. They were a bit pricey, but I don't regret buying them because they all have a collection of different stories as well as different art styles. Check them out and let me know if they can be useful to you.