Another Ed Young book – and I am bowled over by it straight away.
It illustrates, and explains, something in Japanese culture that I kind of understood, but didn’t know had a name: wabi sabi. It was there in the Japanese illustrations of La Fontaine’s fables that I mentioned before. It’s there in haikus, in their quiet minimal holding of a moment in time, in nature. It’s there in the zen garden and the rough, chunky and irregular bowls of the tea ceremony.
And this book illustrates wabi sabi through a story. A story about a cat called Wabi Sabi who wants to understand his name.
The cat tail twitching,
she watches her master, still
waiting in silence.
So, what is wabi sabi? Here is the author of the book, Mark Reibstein, and the illustrator, Ed Young, talking about the book:
Ed Young used collage for his illustrations. As he says in an interview here on How To Be A Children’s Book Illustrator:
“It’s easier to change around, nothing is permanently pasted down,” Young said. “It’s flexible and alive. With other mediums you often get tight too quickly, then you get attached to it and it’s hard to change. Collage was something I used for sketching in the past. Now I use it to finish my work.”
“It’s really play. You don’t get down to make something firm until the [pieces] start to talk to you. Then you listen.”
A warm heavy bowl
comfortable as an old friend -
not fine, smooth china.
