I understood that the image of the wave might be too disturbing, so I read this last night to screen for the PandaBat. As much as I appreciated the story, which is an amazingly positive one for a disaster book, the art actually took away from it. The pictures were too chaotic or unclear or just plain overwhelming, too something for me.I'll slip it into her stack and see what she thinks. Tsunami is adapted from Lafcadio Hearn’s story “A Living God” is a story about a rice farmer name Ojiisan which mean “grandfather” who lived in a Japanese village by the sea. Ojiisan is the wealthiest person in the village and lived on a high mountain that overlooked the village and the sea. One day during the rice harvest ceremony approached a tsunami that only Ojiisan saw from his mountain top cottage. Oijjsan made the ultimate sacrifice to save all the villagers who were celebrating the rice harvest down by the sea by sacrificing his only means of support and finance. Tsunami is a wonderful story that teachers can read to their classroom and have discussion on the power of what one person sacrifice can do to change the lives of so many others in the community. The illustration in the story are done with collage and present to its reader a stunning and vivid image of the effect a natural disaster such as a Tsunami have on our planet. I would recommend this book to children ages 3 up / Grade K up. For younger children this book is a great read aloud and many opportunities for open ended questions and answers about tsunami. For older students they can research and then describe how a tsunami occurs and where tsunamis take place. The students can then create a time line of major tsunamis in history and discuss how they could prepare for a tsunami.Tsunami is a good book to use as a teaching tool the next time there is a tsunami that causes destruction somewhere in the world.Tsunami won the Parent’s Choice Silver Honor 2009.
Tsunami is a great folktale about Ojiisan who sacrificed his riches to save others. Endearing!
—babypandah
The man in this is very smart. It is a really cool book. -Eliah
—Goblue16251
K - 3Fast Land Changes - Hero
—theknightsofnni
