Kana De Manga: The Fun, Easy Way To Learn The ABCs Of Japanese (Kanji de Manga) - Softcover

Kardy, Glenn

Softcover

ISBN 10: 4921205019 ISBN 13: 9784921205010

Publisher: Japanime Company, Limited, 2005

Synopsis

• Kana de Manga, the latest entry in the popular Manga University lineup of books, uses original manga artwork to teach students how to read, write and pronounce the Japanese hiragana and katakana alphabets, also known as "kana." Author Glenn Kardy, editor of several of the English-language volumes in the world-renowned How to Draw Manga series, and artist Chihiro Hattori have teamed up to create this must-have book for manga enthusiasts who are interested in more than just pretty pictures.
• Includes a foreword by Dr. Ronald A. Morse, professor of Japan Studies at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas.

About this title

About the Author:

GLENN KARDY is founder of Japanime, an award-winning creative agency and publisher of Manga University's acclaimed lineup of educational materials. He lives in the Tokyo suburb of Kawaguchi City with his wife, their daughter and a collection of Oakland A's bobblehead dolls.

CHIHIRO HATTORI has been the featured artist in all nine volumes of the Kana de Manga/Kanji de Manga series, and she also illustrated Manga University's Manga Cookbook. Chihiro, her husband and their son live in Yokohama, where they enjoy fine food, fast cars and high fashion.

Review:

These cute, little books use manga-style graphics to help English speakers learn the Japanese writing systems. Kana de Manga: A Fun, Easy Way To Learn the ABCs of Japanese! teaches the hiragana and katakana syllabaries, the closest that Japanese has to an alphabet. For each kana are provided the sound, a word using the sound with accompanying illustration and cultural note, the stroke order for drawing the kana, and empty grids for practice. Front and back matter provide kana contractions plus more information about the kana systems. Almost 40 pages are devoted to practice grids, unnecessary for library readers. The volume is inexpensive, cute, and useful, although other kana tutorials that use mnemonics that is, likening the kana to an image can be effective, too.

The four Kanji de Manga volumes teach 320 of the more complex Chinese-based kanji characters, of which some 2100 are used in standard Japanese. These books teach kanji only through the kana. This may be a good discipline, but most English-speaking readers would have greatly appreciated Romanizations, too, even if relegated to a back section in place of practice pages. There's no Romanized index or glossary, either. Not a priority purchase.

Japanese Sound FX! is likely to be the most useful of these books, with Romanizations, cultural explanations, and illustrations for many of those untranslated sound effects sprinkled tantalizingly throughout manga. This last is recommended for libraries where manga is popular. --Library Journal

About this edition

• Publisher: Japanime Company, Limited
• Publication date: 2005
• ISBN 10: 4921205019
• ISBN 13: 9784921205010
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 144
• Illustrator: Hattori Chihiro