Zen Shorts by Jon J. Muth.




I was kind of surprised -- pleased, but surprised -- when I got home the other night and found my daughter asking me to read from her new book. Turns out my wife had signed up for a children's book club, joined to get the freebies and hung around until she found something worth the obligatory paying of the "time to buy something" piper.

I was even more pleased to see that it was by Jon J. Muth, because I'm a geek. A geek of the comics variety. And, uh, Muth was one of those artists who popped up during the late-80s, early-90s "look, these are watercolors so they must be real art" phase.

And then I got to reading the thing. OK, my daughter's 3, and this book got a little wordy for her -- but she still loved it. It's about a really big, goofy panda named Stillwater who befriends the three children next door. As they each come to visit him, he tells each one a story -- about his uncle's strange encounter with a robber, about the wisdom of a non-commital farmer, and about a monk carrying a heavy load. And then I got really delighted, because I recognized the stories. They're old Zen Buddhist fables wrapped up in new packaging. (For those readers inclined to worry about such things, don't worry -- the Buddha's not in them, and there's no real religious content at all, just ancient wisdom.)

OK, that description makes it sound like this book is kind of straining to fit the stories in, but it's not. The artwork sells it for me -- as Stillwater narrates, he also illustrates in scratchy, black ink that takes over where the gorgeous, soft watercolors of the main story leave off. (I'm allowed to talk that way because Muth drew Wolverine, OK?) It's great to look at, the stories-within-the-story are brief and deep at the same time, the panda and the kids are delightful together, and for people like me, there's a page at the back explaining where the tales came from and on whom he based Stillwater (spoiler: it's this guy).

Anyway, my test reader giggles and points at the pictures, and won't turn the pages until she's finished looking at each one, so that's good enough for me.