The following text may have been generated by Optical Character Recognition, with varying degrees of accuracy. Reader beware!

The Teaching Librarian volume 18, no. 2 21 says together, "Oshimai," Japanese for "The End". There are some stories students like to hear over and over again, like Momotaro, the Little Peach Boy and The Three Magic Charms. We noticed that our grade one class had quite well-developed linguistic abilities in pronunciation and grammar and they had little problem communicating with each other. However, their oral language was focused on the meaning and message, not its form or structure. The kamishibai experience enabled them to reflect on their choice of spoken words and employ literary devices such as establishing a beginning, middle and end to their story, as well as a layered plot. After hearing a few stories, the children were inspired to write stories of their own. One year, they worked individually on a simple story using three cards to suggest a beginning, middle and end. One student wrote a story, "The Ant Who Was Gentle". The Ant Who Was Gentle "One fresh morning, the dew was sparkling on the grass and at the bottom of a blade of grass was a little black ant called Caroline. She was gentle and never pushed in line. "One day Caroline was sad because the other ants were shoving her in the line. Then she heard a rumbling sound and she saw a big stream of volcano lava. She tried to run away from the hot lava and straight back into the ant hill but the lava was getting closer and closer. "She made it back to the ant hill but not all the other ants did. A little girl saw the ants and tried to help them but they were too small for her to pick up. Some ants died. They decided to move their ant hill far away from volcanoes. The gentle ant was always afraid of rumbling noises from then on." Mukashi, Mukashi… Once Upon a Time, Long, Long Ago The Enduring Practice of the Kamishibai Paper Theatre By Mary Anne Cree and Susan Hislop continued on page 22...