Zen Shorts

February 28, 2005
Muth, who has retold traditional stories such as Stone Soup
and Tolstoy's The Three Questions
, and played up their spiritual elements with his elegant watercolors, here introduces three Zen stories from Japan. He frames the trio of tales within the context of a suburban household. Three siblings befriend a giant panda when his red umbrella blows into their yard. Speaking "with a slight panda accent," he introduces himself as Stillwater, and charms Addy and Michael—though Karl, the youngest, is still "shy around bears he know." Each day one of the children goes to visit Stillwater, revealing something of him- or herself. The panda chooses an appropriate Zen fable for each child, illustrated with rough-edged, Chinese-style brush-and-ink paintings on duotone pages, to play up the story-within-a-story structure. In the first, Stillwater tells Addy about his Uncle Ry, who disarms a robber by treating him like a guest (older readers will pick up from the closing author's note that "Uncle Ry" is shorthand for the Zen hermit Ryokan Taigu). In the next, a wise farmer demonstrates that good luck can quickly turn to bad luck and back again (a tale Ed Young also retold in The Lost Horse
). In the last, a monk learns how to stop brooding and live in the present. Readers will fall easily into the rhythm of visits to Stillwater and his storytelling sessions, and many more will fall in love with the panda, whose shape and size offer the children many opportunities for cuddling. Ages 4-up.

A picture book that seems to speak as much to adults as it does to younger readers, Muth's ZEN SHORTS stars Stillwater, a panda who imparts life lessons and shares fables rooted in Zen Buddhist literature with the three children who are his neighbors. Listeners are told that Stillwater has "a slight panda accent," and David Pittu reads his dialogue with the vaguest hint of an Asian-influenced accent. Muth's Caldecott Honor illustrations are the real stars here, alternating between colorful watercolors and pen-and-ink drawings that evoke the brushstrokes of Japanese calligraphy. A mellow soundtrack accompanies the narration, and the overall effect is a peaceful, rather than energetic, listening experience. J.M.D. (c) AudioFile 2010, Portland, Maine