Japanese Children's Favorite Stories Book Two: CD Edition

by Florence Sakade, Florence Sakade, Kurosake Yoshi (Illustrator)

Includes 75-minute audio CD

Singing turtles, flying farmers, and a dragon who cries--these are just some of the magical characters you'll meet in this delightful collection of children's stories. With sparkling illustrations on almost every page and the promise that goodwill and kindness will always carry the day, readers are sure to find much to love in these stories.

Genres: Japan, Picture Books, Childrens, Short Stories

96 pages, Hardcover

First published May 15, 2004

About the author

The late Florence Sakade is widely recognized as a pioneer of English language publishing in Japan. She was an experienced editor and the author/compiler of such favorites as A Guide to Reading and Writing Japanese, Origami: Japanese Paper Folding, and Japanese Children's Favorite Stories. Her distinguished career spanned four decades, and she worked until her death in 1999 at the age of 82.

Reviews

[Alicia · Rating 4 out of 5]

We found this book that includes stories that I remember having in a book when I was a child. The thing I like about this book is that all the stories are just a couple pages long, so they short enough to read if you only want to read for a minute. The book can also be read several stories at a time. It is interesting to see the values that the book has and how many of them parallel Christian values. In most of the stories good things happen to good people and things go wrong for people who are selfish or lazy. I especially like the colorful drawings on each page. I find it interesting to read different folk tales from different cultures and I really liked this book.

[Amy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Second volume of various Japanese folktales. Good for both younger kids and older kids, and any adults interested in traditional Japanese tales.

[Ashley Lambert-Maberly · Rating 4 out of 5]

Charming stories (folk tales, legends) with superlative illustrations that manage to capture the quality of children's book, Japanese-ness, fairy tale, all imbued with a tender gentleness that's hard to describe (and harder to achieve). I had the first volume as a child and loved it. The second volume (same author, same illustrator) is near the same quality ... but of course coming to it as an adult I'll respond a little differently.

(Note: I'm a writer, so I suffer when I offer fewer than five stars. But these aren't ratings of quality, they're a subjective account of how much I liked the book: 5* = an unalloyed pleasure from start to finish, 4* = enjoyed it, 3* = readable but not thrilling, 2* = disappointing, and 1* = hated it.

[Ann Esievoadje · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read this book to my children, two stories a day, throughout December 2017 and they loved it. It reminded me of reading Aesop's fables and watching the Nigerian popular folklore program on Tv in the 80's called Tales by Moonlight. This book was filled with funny stories that had moral lessons children could learn from. Although I bought it for my kids, I kept looking forward to reading the stories in it. It was a good read.