From Publishers Weekly
Starred Review. Stillwater, the giant panda who taught Zen parables to siblings Karl, Addy and Michael in
Zen Shorts, continues to combine his slow-moving grace with genuine spiritual tranquility. This time, Michael faces a daunting spelling bee, and Stillwater, first seen wearing a necktie, introduces the three to Miss Whitaker, an elderly neighbor whose crabby outbursts have frightened them. Stillwater's inward eye sees through her anger to her fear and loneliness. She turns out to be a marvelous spelling coach (Just like plants, words have roots, she tells Michael. Roots of words can teach you to spell), and when Michael wins a red ribbon, the pictures show the whole group sharing his victory with their own red ribbons—the Zen ties of the title. (
Zentai is Japanese for the whole or the entire, as in all of us together.) A subplot featuring Koo, Stillwater's nephew, drifts a bit; he's a cute little panda who punctuates the action with Zen-influenced haiku (and allows Muth another pun: Hi, Koo!). Muth's brush is as sure as ever; Stillwater's big, blunt paws and hunched-over listening posture are irresistible, and Miss Whitaker's delicate face and snow-white hair beautifully counterpoint the vignettes of youthful play. From a religious tradition that makes no theological demands and that will be unfamiliar to most readers, Stillwater offers a model of pure saintliness, and children will instantly respond to him. All ages.
(Feb.) Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
About the Author
Jon J Muth was born and grew up in Cincinnati, Ohio. He drew and drew and drew and drew, and painted. His mother was an art teacher and she took him to museums all over the US. He had his first one-man exhibit of paintings and drawings at the invitation of Wilmington College when he was eighteen.He studied stone sculpture in Japan; paintings, prints and drawings in Austria, Germany and England and he was an English major at SUNY, New Paltz. But most of his education as an artist came from an informal apprenticeship with two fine artists. For the past fifteen years Muth has concentrated his published work in the area of comic books. His comic books have been published by DC/Vertigo, Eclipse Books, NBM, Donald M. Grant Publishers, Inc. and in Japan, Kodansha.For BBC educational television, in 1991, Muth created a short graphic story for which he also produced the music and narrated. In comics he has won the Eisner Award for excellence in painting. In 1994 he was commissioned by the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra to paint a portrait of music director, Jesus Lopez-Cobos. Two books about his paintings, Vanitas : Paintings, Drawings and Ideas, 1991, and Koan, 2000, have been published.
