I will get a physical copy soon-ish, in case the book doesn’t win I can borrow it to you when I am done 
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That would be cool. 
Otherwise, I’ll be looking for it when I am next in Japan.
I have given up on ordering from Japan because of the customs issues I have run into in the past ever since they changed the rules. 
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What issues? You get charged extra by customs for ordering a book?
Yeah, it’s not worth it if you pay more for customs than the books are worth and I am often enough in Japan that I just don’t bother anymore.
Title:
Available formats: physical / ebook / audiobook / full furigana
Summary - Japanese
心躍る夏休み。６年生のリナは一人で旅に出た。霧の谷の森を抜け、霧が晴れた後、赤やクリーム色の洋館が立ち並ぶ、きれいでどこか風変わりな町が現れた。リナが出会った、めちゃくちゃ通りに住んでいる、へんてこりんな人々との交流が、みずみずしく描かれる。『千と千尋の神隠し』に影響を与えた、ファンタジー永遠の名作。
Summary - English
During an exciting summer vacation, sixth grader Lina sets out on a journey alone. After passing through the forest in the misty valley, the mist clears to reveal a beautiful and somewhat eccentric town of red and cream-colored Western-style houses. Lina’s interactions with the strange people she encounters who live on the crazy streets are freshly depicted in this film. This is an eternal masterpiece of fantasy that inspired "Spirited Away.
(Translator: DeepL)
Content Warnings
None known
Reason(s) for nominating: Let’s continue our adventures through books that (in this case, very loosely) inspired Ghibli movies 
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Why in the world was 双葉社ジュニア文庫 ひぐらしのなく頃に accepted as a nomination for this club? It’s not even close to a children’s book at all. Disregarding that it’s a light novel, the content isn’t for children, which seems relevant in a children’s book club. There’s a Haruhi light novel in the nominations as well.
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Because they are the junior bunko versions (with full furigana for younger readers). But I agree that not everything that is junior bunko should br accepted as children stories. By that logic, you could also accept Ascendence of a Bookworm, as it has a junior bunko version. Or Sherlock Holmes. And probably many other novels for adults as well.
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This is a good point of discussion; I reviewed the home post and it seems like the definition of children’s book used here is “published under these specific labels”. I guess it all depends on whether the readers are looking for children-oriented in terms of difficulty or content matter.
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The junior bunko label is explicitly aimed at 小学生 and I would argue those are children, though.
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In my opinion, if the consensus ends up being difficulty oriented, then the name of the book club needs to change to be beginner/intermediate etc. Otherwise it’s misleading.
Obviously, children’s books can be difficult too. For example, I’ll be reading the translation for a Nancy Drew book soon, which in the US is high lexile elementary school book. It should end up being harder than The Magic Thief, which is a lvl 27 (and also listed as a light novel for some reason) on Learn Natively.
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I’m just saying that I’ve watched the Higurashi anime and literally the whole thing was about kids getting tortured and murdered.I’m ignorant about the light novels, but understandably it makes me feel doubtful about the content lol. Do you know how toned back it is? Like is it at Detective Conan levels or are people being forced to rip their own finger nails off again?
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I have no idea, I just know that those books are aimed at 小学生 but that’s an age range up to 12 years, so that’s a pretty broad spectrum.
Edit: Reading through the few reviews that exist on bookmeter, it looks like it has not been toned down for the junior version. I have found that Japanese (horror) books aimed at children are - in my personal experience - not as squeamish they are in the west. 
Since it’s not a pre-requesite to have read any book you are nominating, going by target audience is the easiest way to categorize a book.
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For what its worth, here where I live we absolutely do read Sherlock Holmes in English class when learning English as children… It’s a common starting point and targeted towards kids learning English as a second language a lot…
I think we don’t need to over complicate rules as to what is allowed to be nominated. Amazon specifically lists Higurashi as a childrens’s horror book, as seen in the screenshot.
If we don’t accept what publishers/bookstores specify as a children’s book we have to discuss every book if it really is for children and that doesn’t sound much fun 
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The book category is chosen by the user who added the book, so maybe someone chose the wrong category by accident. (I can’t tell, I don’t know the book and the light novel label still confuses me lol) If you see something like this you can always use the feedback button and ask Brandon to change the category if you feel like it is wrong. I did that in the past and it always gets fixed super fast. Otherwise whenever you add a book, you choose the category yourself. Like with the children’s book above (きのうの君とみらいの君へ ~思春期の6人の物語~ | L24??) I also wasn’t sure if I should add it as children’s book or nonfiction since it is both…
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Yeah honestly, same. I almost think the distinction of whether something is a children’s book, novel, or light novel isn’t even worth making sometimes. Arguably, the Magic Treehouse books are light novels and Magic Thief is a novel. In the US the term “children’s book” is a wide blanket though. Maybe they should just let us have double categories for things. 
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I mean this is fair enough. Maybe Higurashi just traumatized me when I was a young adult.
I think also children could be seen as anyone under the age of 18. When I think of children’s books though I think of people on the younger end of that spectrum. In my mind light novels are usually the teenage equivalent. That’s where my train of thought was when I brought this up anyway.
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I also watched Higurashi when I was young and can’t remember anything (I just know that it was graphic), maybe the trauma wiped it completely 
but since the content warnings are clearly stated in the nomination post I think it’s ok to nominate. I also wouldn’t read it with the club if it would get chosen, I am not big on horror anyway and it is also not what I would be looking for in terms of what I expect from this club, but if people wanna read it, why not. Unfortunately it seems like the club doesn’t have as many active readers left anyway 
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ふしぎ駄菓子屋 had a ton of participants, it seemed, or at least the people who did comment were pretty chatty. I’m wondering if 魔女 not having as much chatter is due to bibliothecary having other stuff going on and weekly threads stop getting posted.
(Also, a reminder that the poll to vote for the next book opens July 13; get in your nominations before the end of the week!)
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It already went down when voting, though. Dropping from 21 voters (ふしぎ駄菓子屋) to 12 voters (魔女) 
Not sure why that is.
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I think that’s the entire reason. Most people are very out of sight out of mind. Less likely to chat if there’s no threads popping up to chat in.
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