Kanji in MangaLand - Marc Bernabe

The Japanese in MangaLand series from JPT introduced language
learners to an innovative, entertaining and educationally-sound way of
learning Japanese through the use of manga.
Now, this same approach is
applied to the often-daunting task of mastering kanji - the Chinese
ideograms - in Kanji in MangaLand, the first of a 3-volume course covering the 1,006 basic kanji characters.

Aimed at Western students aged 12 - 25, the Kanji in MangaLand program differs from traditional methods in that it uses distinct
drawings for the "parts" that form each kanji character; then
it shows a
manga-style illustration to help the student connect the shapes and the
meaning.
In addition, the books present information on compound words,
stroke order, meaning and such unique features as identifying
similar-looking kanji and alternative or older shapes for the same
character.

Kanji in MangaLand:
Levels 1 & 2
includes 21 lessons.
The first seven of these cover all 80 kanji
characters learnt by Japanese children in their first primary school
year.
Lessons 8-21 cover the 160 kanji studied in the next year.
In
every lesson, the student will learn 8 to 12 kanji and then move on to
the exercise section, which features one page of manga using all the
characters learnt in that lesson; a page of different types of
exercises; and a page with the correct answers, translations and a
summary of the new drawing-compounds that will appear in the next
lesson.
The book also has two special exercise parts - one at the end
of each level - as well as indexes of kanji and reading.

With
manga sales booming
-
in 2006, they approached $200 million
- and
interest in learning Japanese skyrocketing as well, the Kanji in MangaLand series is the perfect blend of entertainment and solid language instruction to make learning fun and effective.