High Quality Book-Related TV!

Usually, I urge kids to gather around books, not screens. But with summer almost here, and literary activities welcome, it’s nice to know that high quality, book-related television exists.

Over a year ago, Seattle-based “Look, Listen + Learn TV” approached me about making an episode based on my book Ten Oni Drummers. The book is a bedtime / Japanese counting story illustrated by my late collaborator and friend Kazuko G. Stone.

The content rich “Look, Listen + Learn TV” website looked impressive. We worked out a simple permission for them to do the show. Then I forgot all about it till this month.

Call me biased, but I found their Ten Oni Drummers episode thoroughly engaging and full of charm! Hosts Auntie Lena and Possum begin by discussing the book’s theme of bedtime fears. Then U.S. Congresswoman Pramila Jayapal (WA) and child reader Ayomide share the book aloud, nicely modeling how to take turns reading with kids. Finally, Miss Leka shows a young girl how to play taiko and demonstrates how to make Japanese toy drums (“den-den daiko.”)

Sweet Dream Drums and More

The show “Sweet Dream Drums” featuring Ten Oni Drummers was broadcast on television stations in the Pacific Northwest, but they also posted the episode on Youtube. Ready to savor the story and give your reading voice a break? Settle in with a young child or class and watch the full episode here.

Look, Listen + Learn TV presents the upbeat, inclusive vibe of Mr. Rogers and Reading Rainbow. Possum may even remind you a little of Big Bird on Sesame Street! And the host and Executive Producer Val Thomas-Matson is magnetic. On their website, you can access dozens of high quality book-related episodes. Each runs around twenty-six minutes with warm-up discussion, book reading and some sort of craft activity.

About the Story Ten Oni Drummers

The story’s oni–Japanese monsters–start out small. But as they romp around and pound their taiko through the night, they grow taller and fiercer till they become towering giants. Finally, we discover how they protect children as they sleep.

Ten Oni Drummers was inspired by my years in Japan. As part of my college study abroad program, I was fortunate enough to spend my spring semester living in a Shinto shrine in Kyushu (Southern Japan). As the only foreigner among the Japanese men and women, I participated in the daily rituals and activities of a well-known taiko troupe. On many days, we performed two 2-hour concerts–after first loading the enormous drums onto the trucks and driving to festivals and performing arts centers and setting the stage!

Years later, living in Northern California, I got the idea for the story’s setting while lying down for a nap on a narrow beach. Sleepy-eyed, I stared upside down at the bluff that was jutting straight up not far from the shore. For some reason, I imagined oni rising from the sand and scaling the rugged face of the bluff. While training with the taiko drummers in Japan, we often chanted, counting the thunderous rhythms aloud. What if I taught the reader to count in Japanese and made the oni appear one by one?

The Book Begins:

“In dreams, I gaze upon the sand,

beneath the moonlight in Japan.

I taste the salty wind and sea,

and sometimes I have company.

One oni by the shore,

rears its head and calls for more.”

Later in the story, with all the oni assembled, the cumulative counting rhyme extends to ten:

“Ichi, ni, san TUN-TUN!

One two three, around they run.

Shi, go, roku HOH!

Four five six, their red eyes glow.

Shich, hachi, ku, ju.

Seven-eight-nine-ten you know who!”

Story Expanders–Getting More Out of Ten Oni Drummers

The book is also widely available in an English / Spanish bilingual edition titled Ten Oni Drummers / Diez oni tamborileros. (Don’t get me started about the twenty or so drafts it took the translator and me to get the story to rhyme naturally in Spanish!)

Ready to practice the Japanese counting chant? (My son used to recite it while riding his tricycle around the neighborhood.) Here it is, call and response style, with bilingual students at Grace Thille School in CA.

Taiko solo here by yours truly with a paper mâché mask made by my sister, the artist Joan Gollub.

And here’s a page of the book’s Author’s Note that students seem to find especially compelling: a graph showing the kanji for the Japanese numbers 1-10. Note that the word kanji actually means Chinese characters. So while the Chinese pronounce the numbers differently (i.e. in Chinese, not in Japanese), the written symbols in both languages are the same. When East Asian children learn to write, they are taught that each kanji should fit inside a square space of equal size. They also learn that the direction and stroke order of each kanji must be observed. That’s why we included the step by step strokes and red arrows.

Almost two billion people read kanji worldwide (in China, Japan, Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Singapore, etc., not to mention people of those countries’ diasporas). So we included the graph to introduce children in the U.S. to this pictographic writing system as well.

To get more even mileage out of the book Ten Oni Drummers, check out the downloadable lesson plan here.

4 Questions to Ask Children After Sharing any Book

Finally, as most people who know me can attest, TALKING about books is my enrichment activity of choice. Here are four favorite questions I like to ask children after reading most any story aloud:

1)     Who would you say the book was written for?

2)     What did the author try to show or say?

3)     How did the book succeed or miss the mark?

4)     What would you have done differently if you were the author or illustrator?

Here’s to sharing a LOTTA books this summer!

YAAAAH!