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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

As I mentioned the other day, SCBWI Tokyo recently hosted an event titled Storyboards and Picture Book Dummies for Good Bookmaking with picture book author/illustrator Naomi Kojima. Born in Japan, Naomi spent her childhood years in the U.S. and studied sculpture at Rhodes College in Memphis, Tennessee. Her first two picture books, Mr. and Mrs. Thief and The Flying Grandmother were published in New York soon after she joined a Massachusetts SCBWI chapter. Since then, her books have been published in the U.S. and Japan, and translated into French, Swedish, and Indonesian. Her other books include The Alphabet Picture Book and Singing Shijimi Clams which my daughter gave rave reviews to when she borrowed it recently from our local library.

Holly Thompson, Regional Advisor for SCBWI Tokyo, was kind enough to send some photos of the event (which was conducted in English and Japanese!) and writes:

Yes, Naomi Kojima gave a wonderful workshop for SCBWI Tokyo! She covered storyboarding and dummy making, and participants were given sample storyboards as well as text to divide and paste into notebooks to create dummies. Kojima shared several of her own storyboards including one for a new story she is currently developing. At the end participants had a chance to share the dummies they had created and to discuss their different approaches to dividing the text for effective page turns. In the second photo we are all holding books by Naomi.

Thank you for your continued interest in SCBWI Tokyo! We would be happy if you would share this with Paper Tiger readers.