Setsu Broderick and Willamarie Moore, illustrated by Setsu Broderick,
Japanese Traditions: Rice Cakes, Cherry Blossoms and Matsuri
Tuttle Books.
Ages: 8-12
This delightful picture book of months shows Japan’s traditional customs and practices over the calendar year. Using a family of cats whimsically and colorfully drawn in a beautiful countryside setting, the authors explore the various customs and festivals engaged in by the residents through a typical Japanese year. The book is laid out in months, showing the festivals, games and foods associated with that season. This is the kind of book that one could read over the span of a year, enjoying what a typical country family in Japan would experience in their daily life. The seasons, after all, are somewhat universal and some of what appears in the book would be familiar to readers in many other parts of the world. I especially liked the spring time to early summer period –March to June – when all the fruit trees begin to blossom starting with the plum and ending with the hydrangea, and of course, including the ever symbolic cherry blossom which typically blooms in April.
The illustrations by Setsu Broderick are what make this book a real pleasure to read. As the preface indicates, this book is a look back by the illustrator Setsu, at her childhood memories of the Japanese countryside of 50 years ago. There’s a cozy familiarity to the images that are nonetheless finely detailed renderings of what a country house or yard might look like at any given season in the year. From the communal kotatsu – low table with a wraparound blanket around it with a heat lamp underneath — present in the winter households to the presence of the ubiquitous uchiwa fans in summer, each of the seasons contains nostalgic images from Japan’s more rural areas. For each of the months depicted, there is a question at the back about the activities the kittens are involved in or are doing. These questions are designed to make the reader look closer and enjoy the details – something that I know my daughter likes doing with picture books.
Japanese Traditions is exactly the kind of book worth curling up with in a warm place with your child. It’s a friendly, nostalgic look at the country, filled with the bustling details of the everyday life of Japanese families in the countryside as they experience it twelve months of the year.
Sally Ito
March 2012
A beautiful read at any time of day, but particularly ideal as a gentle bedtime read and exploration, The Park Bench by wife-and-husband team Fumiko Takeshita and illustrator Mamoru Suzuki (Kane/Miller, 1988) is a gem. Taking the simple focus of a park bench sitting silently under a tree, the finely honed narrative takes readers through the day from dark, early morning to dark, starry night. I have to say it sits silently because there is a magical expectation throughout that if the bench wanted to, it could actually speak. And the stories it could tell, of old people through to tiny babies, not to mention birds and animals! We are given a glimpse of some of them through the gorgeous illustrations, which expand on the simple words. For example,
Friends meet at the park.
The two mothers begin to chat.
They talk on and on.
Chitter-chatter, chitter-chatter, until its time to eat.
All the while the white bench listens quietly.
…While the mothers are busy chatting (and there’s a situation many young readers will empathise with!), their two toddler children are keeping themselves occupied, playing on the bench; the jolly park worker is mowing the grass backwards and forwards behind them; and a kitten arrives unnoticed and settles down under the bench. All these narrative threads can be followed in the cartoon sequence on the facing page, though there is no mention of them in the text. Two double-page illustrations of the park offer hundreds of details, as well as scope for comparison, both with each other and with the characters who surround the park bench more directly. The most important of these is the afore-mentioned park worker, who cares for the bench and talks to it - through him, young readers’ affinity with the actual bench is caught and held, as they explore, and perhaps speculate on, the myriad of different lives passing through the park.
The Park Bench is published as a bilingual book, in its original Japanese and English. I can’t read Japanese and read this review from School Library Journal with interest. It made me wish, as ever, that I could have a handle on the original - but I actually like the simplicity of the English (including the fact that the narrative is in the present tense, which persumably does reflect the Japanese) and had already noted the use of very English onomatopeia in Ruth A. Kanagy’s translation…
All in all, I would say that this charming book looks set to have enduring appeal on both sides of the Pacific… and every time it is opened, some new detail will pop out - oh, yes, there’s another one!
Meet Your Friends from Japan!
ともだちは日本にもいるよ！
August 20 - September 27, 2009
The Eric Carle Museum of Picture Book Art located in Amherst, MA, has a collection of Japanese picture books donated by Japanese publishers, picture book art museums, illustrators, and friends of the museum. In this exhibition, Meet Your Friends from Japan! ともだちは日本にもいるよ！, you are invited into the world of modern Japanese picture books that share similar graphic qualities or imaginative themes as those in Eric Carle’s works. Consequently, you may see Japanese culture in a new light as something that is very different and yet familiar to you. For more information click here
