At the beginning of every chapter in Crazy for Kanji, you’ll find a discussion of a particular theme. After that you’ll see several types of “exhibits” relating to the chapter theme. These exhibits (which range from light factoids to in-depth analyses) have names such as “Thematic Explorations,” “Spectacular Shapes,” “Just the Facts,” and “Game.”
People at every level of kanji mastery can get something out of the book; newbies can certainly acquire the basics they need, while even native speakers will learn new things and find challenges. Most pages featured below require no prior knowledge of kanji, with the exception of the game. The links are all to PDFs.
Table of Contents (4 pp., so be sure to scroll down)
From the Preface: “Thematic Explorations: Place Names of Note” and “Spectacular Shapes: Busy Bodies and Real Lookers”
From the Introduction: “Just the Facts: Stroke Order”
From the main text of Chapter One: a section called “Importing a Writing System” (which starts partway down p. 36 and continues onto p. 37, so scroll down)
From Chapter Two: “Thematic Explorations: Just Add Water”
From Chapter Five: “Just the Facts: Kanji Sound Effects in Manga”
From Chapter Five: “Game: Kanji Word Find”
From Chapter Seven: “Thematic Explorations: Parallel Features”
Feel free to post any comments or questions below!
