I’m a big fan of Allen Say so I was happy to see him featured recently in our Illustrators’ Gallery. I’ve read a number of his books but one I enjoyed recently was Music for Alice.  Alice is a Japanese American woman who loves to dance, but circumstances in her life prevent her from enjoying this dream to the full.  Born in California, Alice grows up, goes to college and marries a man named Mark who “wasn’t much of a dancer” and moves to Seattle, Washington.  Not long afterwards, the war comes, and Alice and Mark are sent to Portland, Oregon and are then removed inland to work farm fields on the eastern edge of the state.  Such hardship was difficult and as Alice puts it “Even the thought of dancing didn’t cheer me very much.”  The couple survive, however, and go on to buy a farm of their own on which they grow various crops until they hit upon the idea of growing flowers — gladioli — to be specific, and become the largest gladiola bulb growers in the U.S.

All throughout the book as Alice recounts her life, she reflects occasionally on her love of dancing.  Only at the end of the book and the end of her life, does she suddenly come to an epiphany.  Looking on the ruins of her old farm house, she is overcome by a “wonderful feeling” that makes her suddenly exclaim, “Now I can dance!”  And as the book concludes, “And dance I do — all that I can.”

Music for Alice is an old woman’s meditation on the past.  Old age is its own frontier, and there are still things to learn and discover there.  Allen Say’s superb, nuanced illustrations evoke Alice’s life with clarity and depth.  I highly recommend his picture books which make wonderful reading for children and adults.

Inspired by the PaperTigers website current focus on literacy, Janet and I have been blogging about the topic recently, and one of the points that have come up is how children nowadays might be literate in ways that we adults have yet to explore. These thoughts and resulting comments reminded me of an interview Marjorie did with artist and illustrator Allen Say, in which he credits kamishibai, a traditional form of paper theater storytelling, as the source of much of his childhood happiness. Between the 1920s and 1950s in Japan, it was common to see kamishibai storytellers pedaling their bicycles, equipped with small stages. They would stop at street corners, or wherever children gathered, to sell candies and tell stories—often in installments, to keep kids coming back for more.

When TV first appeared in Japan, in the 1950′s, the kamishibai men started disappearing from the streets, and the medium, first referred to as “electronic kamishibai, was received with a lot of skepticism. Considered by many as the precursor of manga, kamishibai now exists in electronic format, for use on a computer (and why not, if the idea is to go where the children are?!), and its traditional format has seen a revival in schools and libraries in Japan. I’ve even heard of high-tech people using it as a presentation device, instead of –gasp!– powerpoint, praising it as a simple, engaging and very effective tool for presenting ideas.

Marjorie writes in her review of Allen Say’s exquisite book, Kamishibai Man—a book that was 32 years in gestation: “Jiichan returns home at the end of the day–a day which has been caught on film and broadcast via the very medium that brought about the demise of kamishibai…” and her words reveal one of the ideas the author alludes to in his story: “how innovation and change can appear threatening but through time and adjustment there is room for all.”

For more on Kamishibai:

http://www.janmstore.com/kamishibai.html
http://www.kamishibai.com/history.html

One event I will be missing this year, being on the wrong side of the Atlantic, is the exhibition of Allen Say’s work to celebrate his 70th birthday, which is currently running at the Eric Carle Museum of Picture Book Art – but if you can get to Amherst, Massachusetts before 28 October, I should imagine it would be well worth doing so. Writer, Lois Lowry certainly recommends it…

We love reading Say‘s books together. Particular favorites are Under the Cherry Blossom Tree: An Old Japanese Tale, which appeals especially to my younger son’s sense of the absurd; and Kamishibai Man, which has inspired my older son to create his own storyboards. We also read Home of the Brave recently, following the discussions arising from A Place Where Sunflowers Grow. Say’s rich illustrations here and the slightly abstract conveying of the story stretch young children into asking questions… the bedtime storytime can certainly be drawn out beyond the deceptive brevity of the story. As Karen Edmisten says, it is “not a happy book but an excellent one”.

Podcast Just One More Book has reviewed Emma’s Rug and I think they sum up Say’s work as a whole when they say: (more…)