The Kamishibai Classroom

Tara M. McGowan

ISBN-13: 9781591588733

99 pages • 8½ x 11
Year Published: 2010

Kamishibai is an interactive storytelling form that allows students to develop mastery of multiple literacies, while also learning to combine these literacies effectively. The Kamishibai Classroom: Engaging Multiple Literacies Through the Art of "Paper Theater" introduces innovative ideas for using kamishibai performance and story creation as a teaching tool. The hands-on, interactive workshops outlined here were all developed in public school classrooms and other venues in the United States and are perfect for getting students involved in the fun and learning that occur when they create and perform original stories.

This elaborately illustrated guide provides step-by-step instructions for implementing kamishibai workshops in the classroom and integrating them into interactive performances across the disciplines and for all ages. It covers a broad range of techniques used by kamishibai practitioners in Japan past and present, showing the connections from early traditions of picture-storytelling in Japan up to present-day manga and animé.

Written by a professional storyteller and artist who has studied with kamishibai artists and practitioners in Japan, this book is a practical "how-to" for creating and performing original kamishibai stories with students of all ages and across disciplines.

Although kamishibai died out as a street-performance art in the 1960s, it is being revived at annual tezukuri (hand-made) kamishibai festivals in Japan, where storytellers of all ages share their original stories with one another. Along with manga and animÌĮÕÌâå©, this enticing Japanese art form is emerging in America as an engaging?and effective?teaching tool.

Features

• Is written by a teacher, literacy researcher, artist, and storyteller, who is fluent in Japanese, has lived in Japan for more than five years, and has studied with Japanese illustrators and kamishibai practitioners
• Offers educators a concrete, hands-on approach for developing narratives through multiple literacies in a way that will appeal to even the most reluctant learners
• Shows how kamishibai provides a unique bridge to the reading and writing process, while also building confidence and a sense of community through interactive performance before a live audience
• Explores the potential of kamishibai and its multiple applications for teaching literacy in the classroom that includes, but extends far beyond, its current use as a colorful way to introduce Japanese culture and folklore to American students
• Includes original narratives with suggestions for how to incorporate them into hands-on workshops
• Offers a pictorial history of kamishibai and how it evolved out of various etoki (picture-storytelling) traditions in Japan
• Presents more than 160 original illustrations and drawings
• Provides an appendix with instructions for how to make kamishibai stages from readily available, recycled materials