One Leaf Rides the Wind: Counting in a Japanese Garden

A graduate of the School of Visual Arts in New York City, Susan Kathleen Hartung is the acclaimed illustrator of the award-winning Dear Juno, as well as beloved favoritesOne Dark Night and A Mom for Umande.

When not in her studio, Susan can be found renovating her 140-year-old farmhouse, or spending time with family and friends in her nearby hometown of Ann Arbor. Susan lives in Brooklyn, Michigan with her two dogs, Bongo and Audie, and her cat, Gomez.

A Japanese girl in a rust-colored kimono tours a temple garden and counts its fixtures one to 10, accompanied by newcomer Mannis's haiku poetry. The book's elegantly spare design fits its Zen-influenced theme: a watercolor on the left, framed in a white border, faces a haiku on the right. The girl reaches for a drifting maple leaf in the first spread ("One leaf rides the wind./ Quick as I am, it's quicker!/ Just beyond my grasp") and Hartung (Dear Juno) places her squarely at the garden's entrance. As she admires bonsai ("a miniature forest"), views a pagoda (with its "five roofs [that] stretch to heaven") and drinks tea in a teahouse, the artist fills in details that trace her pathway before the girl lies down beside a lotus-covered pond: "What do flowers dream?/ Adrift on eight pond pillows,/ pink-cheeked blossoms rest." Notes in smaller type below offer more information (lotus blossoms "represent purity and mirror the soul's ability to reach beyond muddy waters to the sunlight of a better existence"). Little birds and a saucy cat accompany the girl through gently tinted, sweetly stylized paintings. The last spread shows the entire garden, revealing the girl's progression through it. Mannis's haiku act as both a guide to some of the elements of traditional Japanese culture and a useful introduction to the haiku form. Hartung's watercolors combine areas of finer draftsmanship with simple washes; in the artist's hands, the landscape becomes a series of meditative images. Ages 4-8.
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