My Neighbor Totoro: The Novel

Best book ever! I just love Totoro actually but this book has details tha don’t come across in the movie.

This is a great little book. Wonderful addition to my collection.

I want to first emphasize this is not a book just for girls. this is a book for family and the understanding of life in general for younger kids. My younger boy and I love this book. The story is about how to overcome difficulties. We do not have many Satsuki's in this world, especially in america, because many of us tend to spoil our children instead of allowing them to learn for themselves. Yet, for the few kids who learn to lift up for themselves, many of these kids do not share many family values. This story is about the love for the family and the love for life, the Love for お父さん, the love for お母さん, the love for Mei... The story mixes with a lot of realism. If readers think this is a feel good story, then they miss a lot about what the book is all about. This book is definitely better than the movie.

My brother in law loves the movie, he really likes the book!!

I purchased this book for my 11 year old daughter after we started watching the movie. First off, I would like to discuss the binding and cover of the book. When you pick it up, it just feels special. The pressed board and textured hard cover make this book feel substantial and real, unlike many of the cheaper books you might buy today. The artwork on the front and inside of the covers is really beautiful (the photo on the website does it no justice.) If you want to be swept away into a different time and place, this is the book to do it with. So far my daughter has read three chapters and gotten some story holes from the movie filled in (what illness the mother had, what the girls' names mean...) which I believe is helping her appreciate reading the book more. If it was just the story in the movie it would be great, but expanding on the story gives her the "insider" knowledge to make her want to keep reading. After she finishes, I believe I'm going to read it as well!

I am a very Studio Ghibli fan and this book is so lovely. Obviously the content of the book is indescriptible (I love Totoro) but the quality of the book surprised me, seem I have a treasure in my hands! I wanted to read the book instead of watching the movie which I have done several times already and I do not regret buying this one. Easy to read, easy to carry and the text size is very comfortable.

It’s really cute! Shipped in good condition, the o it thing is say is the corners can somewhat dent if not careful. But really good quality. i do recommend

Miyazaki's masterpiece, My Neighbor Totoro, clearly favors the more slice-of-life side of his narrative formulations. It’s more premise than plot, more an organic starting point that's given space to breathe and gel into an endearing tale: <i>To better care for his ailing wife, a professor and his two daughters move to the countryside where they take residence in a ramshackle house at the edge of a mysterious wood. The girls enjoy exploring their new surroundings. And amidst their adventures, they happen upon an elusive spirit—the mythological Totoro.</i> The movie is sweet. Nuanced. Lacks any hint of pretension or contrivance. And is staunchly antithetical to the Epic or Sensational. Totoro might be the featured, lovable star, but he’s rarely there. Rather, the film is about the kids. Of child-like innocence. Of growing up. Of revering nature and believing in the unseen. Of rural versus urban life without a cityscape ever appearing. It’s about keeping a child-like faith. It’s about community and siblings and seeking to be brave. My Neighbor Totoro is essentially plotless, yes. But it’s nowhere near pointless. If anything, the film’s wistful vibes and strings of meanings are only heightened by its wafty, lackadaisical structure. It’s the characters and their sunny-side setting that matter, both of which evoke a kind of warmth and healing cheer that can’t be told, can’t be heard or held…but only felt by its audience. It’s the sensual over the verbal. The analogue over the digital. The intuitive over the literal. Totoro’s story, in essence, is that there is no plot, only life, in all its shades and fervors. The film is a composite of the human unconscious—of a people, of a time, of an ideal, of Miyazaki himself—transcending the screen. Transcending realities. And settling like the scents of lilac, mint, and mugwort across its mesmerized audience. The movie succeeds because there is no conventional plot. Miyazaki had the vision and intuition to divine the proper balance between story and sensation, to tell his tale without really saying anything at all. It’s what makes Totoro one of his greatest achievements. And why the novelization, unfortunately, can’t quite catch that same Miyazaki magic. Written by Tsugiko Kubo and translated by Jim Hubbert, My Neighbor Totoro: The Novel stays faithful to the original storyline but mismanages the balance, choosing to favor (even belabor) the daily incidentals over the tale’s supernatural thralls. Miyazaki ensures that his moments of the surreal and miraculous, despite their brevity, still punctuate the proceedings with an unforgettable poignancy--being the film's most "realistic" scenes despite their extreme improbability. Kubo tries a different tact, treating the same events in an almost off-handed, trifling fashion--suggesting, perhaps, that the miracles are more akin to dream, of girlhood imagination, than literal happening. Kubo is at a disadvantage, of course. Her medium of print and page can’t match the elastic antics and watercolorful beauty Miyazaki so capably casts across his theater-wide canvas. How does an author, by dint of text, convey every little snort and squirm and squiggle made by a lumbering, rubbery, yet light-as-a-leaf rabbit-cat as conceived by an animator who knows no bounds? The joys of My Neighbor Totoro, and especially that of Totoro specifically, are the subtle shifts in his reactions and movements. The way his whiskers flick and twitch like the feelers on a crab. The way his invisible lips flap and dip beneath teeth the size of dinner plates. The way each raindrop, as they plop on Totoro’s umbrella, brings a note of increasing delight to the creature’s wizened but playful face. It’d take pages of words and adjectives and metaphor to even approach what Miyazaki depicts instantly on the screen. So, perhaps rightfully, Kubo doesn’t try. The scenes with Totoro are kept light, and treated secondarily, even tertiarily, to the experiences of sisters Satsuki and Mei navigating an unfamiliar world where luxury is rare and hard work the norm. Their mother, who’s revealed here to be recovering from Tuberculosis, is better defined than her cinematic counterpart. And likewise, the supporting cast has more to do, with some characters tweaked and others outright added, to further contextualize a plot that was barely there before. But the biggest difference comes with the messaging: while Miyazaki lets his opus speak for itself without any glaring premeditated lesson or statement, Kubo draws a clear delineation between the benefits of rural versus city life. The former rewards through toil and the soil; the latter pampers through convenience and superficial pretense. One mode of living, as depicted here, is clearly superior to the other. Reducing an animated masterpiece, one in which half the joys are stored in the visuals, is probably a losing proposition—one complicated further through an overlapping layer of English localization. Kubo’s attempt to recast Miyazaki's magic spell is admirable but can’t fully duplicate his fizzy, jubilant spirit. But again, how could it? Nevertheless, taken as a standalone project, or even as a contextual guidebook to the filmmaker’s classic, Kubo’s My Neighbor Totoro boasts its own fuzzy charms. It’s the perfect prayer for those with similar yearnings of escaping a city's suffocation…and finding themselves at rest, at last, in a sea of enriching green. Courtesy of Lost Nostalgia

Loved it! The illustrations are very nice and the novel is beautifully written. Its a delight for readers of all ages.

En la novela de mi vecino Totoro las circunstancias y el modo de vida de ese momento se relatan cuidadosamente. Es una novela para niños en prosa simple, que nos puede emocionar también a mayores. Esta novela transporta a tiempos y lugares diferentes, no solo relata la historia de la película sino que la amplia rellenado algunos huecos (como la enfermedad que tuvo la madre) consiguiendo que sea excepcional e interesante. Aunque viene en inglés se necesita poco nivel para leerla. A diferencia de la mayoría de los libros baratos que se encuentran en el mercado, este libro tiene buena calidad. Tanto el dibujo de la tapa dura impresa mate como las ilustraciones del interior son realmente bonitas y nos muestran el arte de la película. Al principio trae un mapa de Masugo, hacia 1955. El tamaño del libro es de 13.3cmX18.5cm y consta de 244 páginas. Con letra grande. Historia original e ilustraciones de Hayao Miyazaki, escrita por Tsugiko Kubo y traducida por Jim Hubbert. Lo que no me ha gustado es la forma de envío como carta urgente para dejarlo en el buzón.

Minhas filhas adoraram.

Beautiful piece👌

Quality book