Customer Reviews

Shibumi and the Kitemaker

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

A gorgeous book with glorious illustration. If this is based on a traditional story, it's not one that I've heard before. It kept me entirely engrossed while I read it. There is more than fairy-tale depth here, particularly as obstacles to the traditional happy ending keep showing themselves. Very satisfying.

While I loved this Japanese fairy tale, what struck me most about this book is the beautiful illustrations. The author is known for his Little Critter series, but this book is so elegant and classic, you would never guess they are written by the same person. Though this is a picture book, the story is longer than most picture books. Thus, it is appropriate even for older children. I also think this book is a great way to introduce children to other cultures. Check it out- you'll love it.

My 8 year old and I read it together and it was a moving experience for both of us. She is reading chapter books now and we both miss the kind of picture book stories that we had enjoyed so much. At any age, it's nice to sit down with a good story. The combination of the gorgeous illustrations and the thoughts about family and devotion in this story was magic.

As a bonus, Mercer Mayer talks about his childhood growing up in Honolulu, Hawaii and how he learned about race and "melting pots" as a child. Congratulations on a wonderful book, Mr. Mayer!

Get the book and read it with a child.

Even though I love the Little Critter series, my favorite book of Mercer Mayer's has always been East of the Sun, West of the Moon with it's colorful and detialed illustrations. With this new book, Mercer Mayer worked with a Mac computer and I am AMAZED with the rich textures and warm realistic quality. No cool technical stuff here...this story too is from the heart and magical!

In this tale of ancient Japan the Emperor has made life perfect for the daughter he loves. Sadly, or not, depending on your point of view, she is living in a walled garden. Then one day she climbs a tree and sees over the wall. Now she knows the truth and she wants to do something about it. So she has the Royal Kite Maker build a giant kite that carries her aloft. She refused to come down until her father makes the world outside her garden is as beautiful as her garden.

And, of course, the girl's father will try and make things right, but it will not be so easy. It will, however, be easy for you to order this better than excellent book. Even though my almost three-year-old son is too young to understand it, he loves looking at the pictures as him mom or I read along, making up words as we go, so that he can (we think) understand. He'll be reading soon and this is certainly going to be a book he grows with. It is just simply extraordinary.

I highly recommend this book to any fan of Mercer Mayer's work or to a fan of Japanese culture. Although Mayer admits in the note in the book that this story is not based on any known Japanese folklore, it reads just like a folktale should and has enough of a Japanese flavor to make it acceptable to at least Western readers. (I wonder what a Japanese reader would think.) However, the real star of the book is the illustrating. Mayer is excellent at capturing moments from the story in a single illustration, incorporating many elements into a composite that is itself a story. I would recommend his rendition of "Beauty and the Beast" as a further example of this. The style is rich with color and texture, and each illustration has balance and dynamic symmetry. He pays as much attention to the background and the borders as he does the foreground and the main action. You can delight in a small detail like the pattern of the emperor's kimono, or how each of the many kites flying at the end of the book is different.

Mayer also dared to do all the illustrations for this book on a computer, using Adobe Illustrator and a variety of other software. I am impressed with the result, although a few minor things bug me about some of the illustrations. For instance, in a few spots, objects in the distance appear to be sharper, more in focus, then objects in the foreground. It seems to me that this should have been addressed before publishing the book as it goes against our normal way of seeing. But that aside, I commend Mayer for trying his illustration skills in a new medium, and admit that Mayer on a bad day is still wonderful to look at.

The minor glitches with the illustrations, and the fact that the story could have been a bit more poetic, keep this book from getting five stars. Still, it is worth buying. It is a beautiful book.

Just recently we discovered Mercer Mayer and we love his series "Little Critter". I looked for other books he had written and saw this one. It is so beautifully illustrated that it was joy to look at it. My daughter said right away "What beautiful pictures".The story is beautiful, very sad but saying a true story of how the world is. It is a very similar story of the Buddha story where he left the beautiful palace because he felt pitiful to the suffering people outside of the palace. Every book has a short description of what happens in the book. This book's description is not accurate on the first few pages. It says: " After seeing the disparity between the conditions of her father's palace and the city beyond its walls, the emperor's daughter has the royal kitemaker build a huge kite to take her away from it all." Once you read the story, you can see that this cannot be any further from the truth. Because she asks the kitemaker to build her this kite, so she can change the city. A very wonderful, well written story. We have become fans of Mercer Mayer and I am getting more of his books of this kind.

This looked like a beautiful book but it didn't keep my 4 year old daughter's interest. I could barely stay awake through it. The story is good and I like the illustrations but, unlike with some dramatic tales of adventure, my interest slowly waned with each twist and turn of the plot. I understand Mercer Mayer took a hiatus from writing children's books -- I'm glad he's back and look forward to his next one. But I wouldn't buy this book.