Kamishibai Story Theater


Book Description

De Las Casas has adapted 25 folktales from across Asia for whole classroom use, borrowing a Japanese method of storytelling through pictures. The book offers tips on rehearsing and detailed discussion and background of the Kamishibai processes, and it describes how to coordinate grade-level story presentations. Reproducible tales can be distributed to each member of the class to aide in creating illustrations. The stories in Kamishibai Story Theater will delight children in grades 2-6, enticing them to participate in their own story fest. De Las Casas has adapted 25 folktales from across Asia for whole classroom use, borrowing a Japanese method of storytelling through pictures. Kamishibai theater harkens back to itinerant storytellers (Kamishibai Men) who conveyed their tales by means of illustrated cards slid into slots in wooden stages built on the back of their bicycles. This book includes an introductory chapter describing in detail the methods to use in coaching students in the art of Kamishibai Story Theater. It offers tips on rehearsing, and detailed discussion and background of the Kamishibai processes, and it describes how to coordinate grade-level story presentations. Reproducible tales can be distributed to each member of the class to aide in creating illustrations. Spot illustrations for each tale give students an idea of the flavor of their drawings for that story. The stories in Kamishibai Story Theater will delight children in grades 2-6, enticing them to participate in their own story fest.




Kamishibai Man


Book Description

The Kamishibai man used to ride his bicycle into town where he would tell stories to the children and sell them candy, but gradually, fewer and fewer children came running at the sound of his clappers. They were all watching their new televisions instead. Finally, only one boy remained, and he had no money for candy. Years later, the Kamishibai man and his wife made another batch of candy, and he pedaled into town to tell one more story—his own. When he comes out of the reverie of his memories, he looks around to see he is surrounded by familiar faces—the children he used to entertain have returned, all grown up and more eager than ever to listen to his delightful tales. Using two very different yet remarkable styles of art, Allen Say tells a tale within a tale, transporting readers seamlessly to the Japan of his memories.




Manga Kamishibai


Book Description

Before superheroes filled the pages of Japanese manga, such characters had been regularly seen on the streets of Japan in "kamishibai" stories. This work tells the history of this fascinating and nearly vanished Japanese art form that paved the way for modern-day comic books.




Kamishibai Story Theater


Book Description




Performing Kamishibai


Book Description

Kamishibai (paper-theater), a Japanese picture-storytelling medium, is gaining global interest as we move from a text-based culture to one that emphasizes multiple semiotic systems and performance. This is the first volume to explore the potential of kamishibai as a dynamic "new" interactive medium for teaching multimodal communication and shows how synchronizing oral, visual and gestural modes develops students’ awareness of all modes of communication as potential resources in their learning. By examining the multiple modes involved in kamishibai through actual student performances over several venues, this volume overturns commonly held expectations about literacy in the classroom and provides a critical perspective on assumptions about other media. It offers much-needed information about a medium that is attracting interest from educators, academics and artists worldwide.




Propaganda Performed: Kamishibai in Japan's Fifteen-Year War


Book Description

The first in-depth scholarly study in English of the Japanese performance medium kamishibai, Sharalyn Orbaugh’s Propaganda Performed illuminates the vibrant street culture of 1930s Japan as well as the visual and narrative rhetoric of Japanese propaganda in World War II. Emerging from Japan’s cities in the late 1920s, kamishibai rapidly transformed from a cheap amusement associated with poverty into the most popular form of juvenile entertainment, eclipsing even film and manga. By the time kamishibai died as a living medium in the 1970s it had left behind indelible influences on popular culture forms such as manga and anime, as well as on avant-garde cinema, theater, and art. From 1932 to 1945, however, kamishibai also became a vehicle for propaganda messages aimed not primarily at children, but at adults. A mixture of script, image, and performance, the medium was particularly suited to conveying populist, emotionally compelling messages to audiences of all classes, ages, and literacy levels, making it a crucial tool in the government’s efforts to mobilize the domestic populace in Japan and to pacify the inhabitants of the empire’s colonies and occupied territories. With seven complete translations of wartime plays, over 300 color illustrations from hard-to-access kamishibai play cards, and photographs of prewar performances, this study constitutes an archive of wartime history in addition to providing a detailed analysis of the rhetoric of political persuasion.







I Got the Rhythm


Book Description

On a simple trip to the park, the joy of music overtakes a mother and daughter. The little girl hears a rhythm coming from the world around her- from butterflies, to street performers, to ice cream sellers everything is musical! She sniffs, snaps, and shakes her way into the heart of the beat, finally busting out in an impromptu dance, which all the kids join in on! Award-winning illustrator Frank Morrison and Connie Schofield-Morrison, capture the beat of the street, to create a rollicking read that will get any kid in the mood to boogie.




I Got the Christmas Spirit


Book Description

In the same feel-good style of I Got the Rhythm, this exuberant picture book explores the joys of the holiday season, once again illustrated by award-winning artist Frank Morrison. It's the most wonderful time of the year, and a mother and daughter are enjoying the sights and sounds of the holiday season. The little girl hears sleigh bells ringing and carolers singing. She smells chestnuts roasting--CRUNCH! CRUNCH! CRUNCH!--and sees the flashing lights of the department store windows--BLING! BLING! BLING! She spreads the spirit of giving wherever she goes. And when she reaches Santa, she tells him her Christmas wish--for peace and love everywhere, all the days of the year.




Beware, Beware of the Big Bad Bear!


Book Description

A delicious folktale sure to make you laugh! Oh no, Maw Maw is out of the most important ingredient for her beautiful buttery biscuits- sody sallyraytus! She sends her family off, one by one, with a warning about the bear at the bridge. Follow along as they try unsuccessfully to get the sody sallyraytus home. Who knew that a friendly, and very hungry, squirrel would jump in to save the day! Readers can make their own fluffy biscuits with the recipe included at the end.