One simple idea. Five great books.

Contents:

Who is Toshio Fukuda?

Born in Sakai City in the Osaka Prefecture, Toshio Fukuda has always had a love for art and craft in both 2D and 3D forms. While drawing animals from photographs, Fukuda had a light bulb moment. The initial idea came when he saw a dog in the photo looking behind him. So when he published Ushiro ni iru no daare that let young children play a guessing game with the book, it was an absolute hit! It was even noted as Princess Aiko’s favourite book! In the year that followed, he released two more books and the series has grown to a full 5 books!

Reading with children

The question and answer style of the book is well done and the page spreads are well designed to make the guessing game easy enough to be engaging but hard enough to be fun. My niece was able to guess a large majority of the animals using the little hints when we first got this book (she was over two-and-a-half at the time).

The repetition and the involvement with animals in this book that seems very similar. Eric Carle’s Does A Kangaroo Have A Mother Too? and Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See? jump to mind here. It’s a common motif, that’s for sure - and it’s very effective! It helps children remember the questions and the answers so they start building confidence in reading by themselves!

The text is clear and large and despite the cartoon font, is easy to read. The vocabulary is very basic - so this is a great book for beginner learners and very young children!

There are other fun fish and animals!

Text: “Ah, it’s a turtle! Turtle, turtle, who’s behind you?”

There are other fun fish and animals!

Text: “Ah, it’s a flying fish! Flying fish, flying fish, who’s below you?”

There are other fun fish and animals!

Text: “Ah, it’s a seal! Seal, seal, who’s below you?”

Tips, artwork and engagement

Question and answer style text make this very straightforward and easy to engage both parent and child in the reading! The text follows this pattern of question (“Animal, animal, what’s behind/in front/etc. you?”) and answer (“Ah! It’s another animal!”) so it’s easy to follow and learn.

While a kid is still familiarising themselves with the book, a good way to introduce the animals is to ask the question and ask them to make a guess in Chinese. If they don’t know the name in Chinese, you could either urge them to say it aloud in English (or another language) or just turn the page to continue reading.

Another thing that this book does is introduce prepositions in Chinese which usually consist of one or two words. Behind is 后面 hòu miàn, in front is 前面 qián miàn, under is 下面 xià miàn, above is 上面 shàng miàn. You could position figurines or photographs of the animals around you as you read or simply point to the book. The drawings do a good job of demonstrating the prepositions in use.

前面 qián miàn - front

后面 hòu miàn - behind

上面 shàng miàn - above

下面 xià miàn - under

The global Luka is also able to read the whole series, so you can enjoy a Luka reading if you’re not available to read with your kids or if you’re not comfortable with reading the book yourself yet.

The key characteristics and perhaps colours of the animals are also preserved in the drawings. This is something that Toshio Fukuda has been widely praised for: retaining the shape and resemblance of the real animal while having a cute, soft cartoon style. Those striving for true depictions of animals, however, will have to rely on printed photographs or figurines to recreate the line of animals.