Picture Book Review of Tsunami by Kimiko Kajikawa

Tsunami! by Kimiko Kajikawa

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

In the interest of embracing cultural literacy in my classroom, I searched my file cabinet filled with picture books for something to read out loud. I came across a galley I obtained a few years ago of Tsunami! by Kimiko Kajiikawa.

Tsunami! is folk Japanese story about the sacrifice (theme) of a wealthy rice farmer. Ojissan realized a tsunami was coming while the villagers were on the beach celebrating the harvest. He set fire to his rice fields in order to bring the villagers running to higher ground. His action saved the people from being swept out to the sea.

I read this book aloud in less than ten minutes to my fourth graders. They were engaged in the story, and since the topic is timely due to the earthquake and tsunami that occurred in Japan (March, 2011), my students had numerous questions and text-to-world connections.

After completing the story I used the text to teach summarization. We worked together to determine the main idea of the beginning, middle, and end in order to write a 2-3 sentence summary (above). I recommend finding Japan on a map or globe, and explaining what happens in a tsunami before reading the story (see the video below).