Her most famous work Kiki's Delivery Service, released in 1985, was made into an anime film by Hayao Miyazaki, and spawned a series of sequel novels.
Currently, she serves as a guest professor at the Nihon Fukushi University in Aichi Prefecture.
She wrote a non-fiction story called Brazil and My Friend Luizinho (Ruijinnyo shōnen, Burajiru o tazunete), based on her experience at that time, about a Brazilian boy who loves dancing samba.
[4] In 1985, she published the children's novel Majo no Takkyūbin (魔女の宅急便, Kiki's Delivery Service), about a young witch-in-training who starts a delivery service in a seaside town of Koriko.
[10][1] The judges described her work as having "an ineffable charm, compassion, and élan" and praised her inspirational female characters as "singularly self-determining and enterprising.