Last year I taught for Brattleboro's Elementary Enrichment Program, and all of the second graders in the program made their own original kamishibai with me. The next few posts will document that process.
The initial part of the project was, of course, immersion in the story telling form. The children heard and saw a number of Japanese stories that I performed for them on my small wooden theater. After initially just enjoying the stories, I made sure to draw their attention to aspects of the kamishibai form such as
- the way close ups function as a powerful illustration technique
- the "partial slide" for extending and heightening the delivery of visual information
- the use of dialogue as the primary way of orally presenting the story.
Creating kamishibai from start to finish is a multi-step process. All of the students began by creating storyboards. Here children are shown early in the project's process, creating their plans for their stories in pictures and words.
The children here are creating the storyboards, in pictures and in words, that they will use throughout the project to guide them as they create their kamishibai stories.
