Today's post is about kamishibai, a Japanese form of storytelling with colorful picture cards. Check out this link to read her post.
She mentions Allan Say's touching book, Kimishibai Man, about an aging storyteller whose livelihood is lost to television. At the end of the book, he decides to take his bicycle and his little stage and look for an audience. He finds one. Happy ending.
Live storytelling thrives today, whether it is tellers with microphones,or story hours with books. One person using her voice to tell a story, read, recited or woven from memory is so much more evocative than people acting out a scene. A spoken story - even with pictures as aids - leads the listeners into their own imaginations where they can depth and detail. Television and movies, and even theater to a smaller extent, leave little to the imagination. Well, we can still imagine what the scene smells like. We can imagine how it feels to hold that little piglet. But not much else.
I will introduce storytelling to a group of youngsters and their parents on Sept. 6th at Cops'n'Kids in South Bethlehem. Stop by! and we can talk about the importance of sharing stories in person.
More later. I have to finish this book.
