Our Journeys reading story next week is called the Kamishibai Man. This book is excellent to use as a mentor text (a book used to enchance writing instruction) to teach children about writing a cliffhanger ending. It is a story about the Japanese art of storytelling, and it explains how storytellers used to travel from village to village telling stories before books, libraries, television, and computers became popular and easy to access. If you teach using the Journeys program, it is excellent to compare to What Do Illustrators Do?
Here is author Allen Say with his Kamishibai Man presentation at Duke University.
Video of the past and present history of Kamishibai - stop at 1:32 for younger readers and writers
Video of Author Rebecca Kool reading and explaining her Kamishibai book The Fly Catcher Boy
Check out this excellent website with a compilation of mentor texts!
see my class website for more Kamishibai Man and other Journeys materials
