Kiki’s Delivery Service By Eiko Kadono

Publication Date: January 1, 1985

Publisher: Puffin

Pages: 208

Genre: Children’s, Middle Grade

Rating: 5/5

Kiki’s Delivery Service is a heartwarming and sweet Japanese kid’s classic about a coming of age witch who has reached the age of 13 and must now leave her home and find a town where she can be the resident witch. Kiki decides on the town of Koriko where she realizes her skills could be used best as a delivery service and embarks on numerous adventures from there.

This story was fantastic and both myself and my 12 year old son highly enjoyed it. I loved that each chapter focused on a new challenge Kiki had to overcome and it was wonderful to see her preserve. Kiki also has a talking cat, Jiji, that only she can converse with but their relationship was humorous and pleasing. Kiki also meets a wonderful group of people in her new town and I appreciated how Kiki helped them and they helped Kiki. I absolutely adored this story and it is one I will probably read many times in my lifetime. This story is also a fantastic one for children because it has a lot of great lessons that kids can take in and perhaps help them out in some way. I even found a couple of Kiki’s lessons to be great reminders for my own life.

I both read and listened to this because I planned on watching the movie with my family on Sunday night and I needed to finish it quickly. I preferred both and would even recommend the audiobook because I thought the narrator did a great job with the story. It was our first time watching the movie and I have to say that at first I found it disappointing but overall I did enjoy it. It is pretty different than the book which is where my disappointment came in. However, I have come to the conclusion that the movie is more geared towards a YA audience and the book a Middle Grade audience. I did prefer the book but the movie was still good and one we will definitely watch again as a family.

I feel like most people have seen the movie since it is so popular but because they are so different I still highly recommend the book to you. And if you have kids I also think Kiki’s Delivery Service is a fantastic one to have in your family library. I was looking forward to reading the rest of the books in the series but I don’t think they have been translated yet which is frustrating. I hope that one day the publishers will get around to making those available for us.

~Cassie