Childrens Litterature The Three Questions

The genre of this picture book is what I am gonig to call an adaptation. For the story, you see, was borrowed from a man who already wrote it. The original author was Leo Tolstoy. According to the back flap cover, Leo Tolstoy is one of Russias most famus noveleists and story tellers. The three questions was a short story that Leo wrote. I do not know much about Leo right now, and in fact wished I reasearched more about him. I feel like the more I knew about the original tale, and the original author, the more that I could take from the adaptation for children.

The new author also brought in some other influence to his adaptation. In the explanation of the book the author mentioned that he brought in the influence of zen to his book. Again, I would like to learn more about zen so that I could elucidate more of the meaning from the book. I do notice in the pictures a kind of high forest chinese feel, perhaps this is where the zen comes in, in the art work.

The art work is one of the first things that struck me about the book, and in fact, the art work is deffinately my most exubereantly favorite great excellent favorite part of the book. It is water color paintings, but with a quality of color, shape and detail unlike in any other water color paintings I have ever seen. The bridges that fade into the mist, the himalayin mountains in the sunny winter, the posture of the boy as he flies his red kite. Even the wy that the light plays off of the characters, the water color paintings in this book are special!!

It would be nice to incorporate an art lesson as well as a religion or social studies lesson alongside with this book. The paintings and the sub narrative, or the backround of the book, make it a very rich and interesting read, if not for the story line, then at least for the making and origins of the book.

Luckily the story line is pretty good to. It is a book that leads to a moral. It starts with three questions, and in the end, through the story, we learn the answer to those three questions. The most important time is now, the most important one is the one we are with, and the most important thing is to do good for the one standing at our side.

(p.s. the paintings are so good I wanted to mention that again)

Thanks World
Happy Reading!

Adrian