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Sky
Sweeper
illustrated
by Holly Meade
Melanie Kroupa Books
Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2007
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*Starred
review,
Kirkus
*Parents
Choice
Silver Award, 2007
*S&P
Book
Awards:
Best Spiritual Books of 2007
*Starred
review,
Library Media Connection
*Skipping
Stones
Honor Award:
Multicultural and
International Books, 2008
*Lupine
Picture
Book Honor Award, 2007
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| From
the
book jacket: |
Can a
single flower say more than
words?
Young
Takeboki needs a job, and the
monks in
the temple need a Flower
Keeper--so Takeboki sets to
work. It’s the
Flower Keeper’s job to sweep up
the springtime plum and cherry
blossoms
in the temple garden. As the
seasons change, Takeboki
continues to find
pleasure in doing his job
well--sweeping up flowers and
leaves and
snow--and then creating swirling
worlds of his own in the gravel
and
sand of the temple garden.
Friends
and family ask him: Shouldn’t
you get
a better job? Wouldn’t you like
to see more of the world?
Takeboki
can’t answer those questions.
All he knows is that as the
seasons
shift, each one as beautiful as
the last, he is happy.
Luminescent collage
illustrations created from
delicate Japanese papers bring
to life this thought-provoking
parable
that, with its Buddhist
sensibility, has much to say
about work,
wisdom, and the possibility of
discovering a world of unending
delight
in one small garden.
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| A
little
about the book: |
When I read about an
old-time job in Japan, that of Flower
Keeper, the words and image
stayed with me, and a story began to
unfold and evolve over the years.
I was
helped by my readers, especially Holly
Meade, who had a vision of how
the text would work as a picture book
and how it could be simplified to
focus on its most important messages
about life, work, and happiness.
It
makes me happy when I look at Holly's
beautiful
artwork, and it makes me happy
to hear the different
“lessons” people draw from the Flower
Keeper's story.
The story might touch off a
classroom
discussion, an exploration of
philosophical questions such as: What
is
play? What is work? What makes a good
life? And of course, What makes a
person happy?
When I read Sky
Sweeper to
Elisabeth Anderson’s class at Antilles
School
in St.
Thomas, her fourth graders responded
with a group poem about happiness:
WHAT
MAKES ME HAPPY?
by Class 4A
What makes me
happy?
Reading gives me a good feeling
Basketball – I like to get the ball in
the hoop
My PS2 – it’s electronic!
What makes me
happy?
Sailing – it’s my sport
Gliding across the water
Traveling around the world
Going sight-seeing
Swimming
I like to be under water
It’s nice and warm
What makes me
happy?
Gymnastics - being on my hands
instead of my feet
Golf – I’m good at it
I like to swing my driver
My Xbox – ‘cause I can control
the person in the game
What makes me
happy?
Playing with my kitty
I roll up a tin foil ball
and she pounces on it
My parakeet--teaching it to sing
Sometimes it chirps
loudly and annoyingly
but sometimes it chirps
sweetly
Football – I like to score
What makes me
happy?
Kick ball
I like to kick the ball
Jumping in the pool
feeling the freezing
water
Sleeping - I can be unconscious
I don’t know what’s going
on
If something bad happens,
I won’t remember
When I’m awake -
acting
expressing a
character
What makes me
happy?
Holidays
You get to be with your family
You get to get to spend time with them
You love them
And they love you.
And then someone in the class asked,
“What makes us
ALL
happy?
And his classmates answered,
“Eating!”
The Flower
Keeper's story might also lead to
an exploration of Japanese literary
forms: haiku and haibun. Writing
haiku is already a popular activity in
the classroom, but I’m hoping
children will be encourged to write without
the seventeen syllable rule
as an absolute. In fact, seventeen
syllables create a poem that is
often too long and wordy to be called
a haiku. The Haiku Society of
America adopted this definition:
1) An unrhymed Japanese poem recording
the essence of a moment keenly
perceived,
in which Nature is linked to human
nature.
It usually consists of seventeen onji
[sound units].
2) A foreign adaptation of 1, usually
written
in three lines totalling fewer than
seventeen syllables.
Most
important of all is the “haiku
spirit.”
In her terrific teacher’s manual, The
Haiku Habit Workshop, Jeanne
Emrich writes: “The haiku way is
just to say it--simply. Written in a
very direct manner, haiku tell the
who, what, where, and when of the
moment as the author perceived it
through his or her senses. The result
of such a concrete description is
that the reader feels as if he or she
also is having the experience.
And because commentary is kept to a
minimum, the reader is free to come
to his or her own conclusions about
what the experience means....”
Haibun is
prose--a story, impression,
incident, description--which includes
haiku. The haiku may be
crystallizations of the thoughts and
images evoked by the prose, but
they are not directly related to it.
They don’t summarize or moralize,
as the proverbial couplet might when
it appears at the end of many
other kinds of stories. The haiku can
be embedded in the prose or
simply come at the end of the piece.
Sky Sweeper
concludes with a haiku by Moritake,
one of the most famous haiku in
Japanese literature. It evokes the
garden setting for me, and the
mysteries, delights, and surprises one
encounters in a garden. If one
wishes to seek out connections,
Moritake’s haiku relates to the story
through the image of the blossom.
Blossom is a “seasonal word,” which
many haiku contain to indicate time
and place. It represents spring, a
time of birth and rebirth, and a
connection to the Flower Keeper’s job
as well.
The
butterfly, a creature of fragile
beauty,
with a magically dramatic life cycle,
also symbolizes life’s
preciousness--and transience. Is it
any wonder that, for some Japanese,
butterflies represent the souls of the
dead?
I like to
think that the Sky Sweeper lives on,
if not in the butterfly, then in the
spirit of the young gardener who
follows in his footsteps and shares
his knowledge and his happiness.
I would also
like to think, along with caring
for the temple garden, that the Flower
Keeper cultivated “the seeds of
compassion," as Thich Nhat Hanh put
it.
When I
was working on Sky Sweeper,
my
daughter introduced
me to the writing of Thich Nhat Hanh,
a Zen Buddhist monk who has
become one of the truly spiritual
voices of our time. His teachings
promote the attainment of peace for
ourselves and for the world. For
example, by not responding to anger
with anger, we can create the
possibility of
turning our enemies into friends.
Imagine if we lived in a world
governed by the teaching of
non-violence!
In an article
in Yoga
Journal (Sept./Oct. 2003),
Thich Nhat Hanh
describes Buddha’s
transformation of the arrows of Mara,
the Evil
One, into flowers. Transforming
negative emotions into positive ones,
he writes, will transform ourselves
and others: “You soon see
that arrows shot at you come out of
other people’s pain. You do not
feel injured...; instead you have only
compassion....” He acknowledges
this may be difficult but teaches
that, in this way, “We can all make
flowers out of arrows.”
To those who do not
recognize the value of his work
and feel he should take a less
“lowly” path in life, the Flower
Keeper responds not with anger but
with empathy and good humor, a
fitting response for one who will
ultimately smile with the inner peace
and contentment of Buddha himself, the
same Buddha who smiled in his
flowery victory over Mara.
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| From
the reviews: |
“Infused with a Buddhist sensibility,
written in clear, minimalist
language, accompanied by rich, organic
illustrations and culminating in
a haiku by Moritake, this is an
origiinal fable not to be missed.” Kirkus,
starred review.
"This is a complex, challenging story.
Children will need help
connecting Gershator’s poetic, often
Zen-influenced messages about
Takeboki’s sense of purpose and
personal reward; his death adds even
more weight to the story. But Meade’s
beautiful collage illustrations
of the earthly garden and glorious
afterlife greatly enhance the
story’s accessibility and will help
kids get closer to the text’s
religious and philosophical themes." Booklist
"Only after the old man's death do the
monks realize that his humble
work has nourished their own serenity.
Takeboki himself graduates to a
perfect heaven (for him): now he
sweeps the sky. As Gershator explains
in a note, her story celebrates the
rewards of meaningful work as well
as the artistry of Japanese gardens.
Meade's mixed-media illustrations
(collage, paint, delicate line)
intimately depict the dedication to a
simple-seeming task that is, in truth,
an art." Hornbook
“The illustrations provide a
bit of
foreshadowing, incorporating the
figure of another smiling boy, the
future Flower Keeper, in later
scenes.... Nicely constructed for
reading
aloud, this quiet story has a
satisfying progression that might
prompt
reflective discussion.” School
Library Journal
"As Gershator's (Rata-Pata-Scata-Fata)
resonant, lyrical tale opens,
young Takeboki
takes a job as a Flower Keeper for the
temple monks. Though his task is
to sweep up the fallen plum and cherry
blossoms in their garden in
spring, the conscientious, content
worker continues sweeping through
the other seasons--and many of
them....Created from Japanese papers,
Meade's (Hush!) richly
textured, luminous collage
illustrations are as simple and
graceful as
Gershator's narrative. Like
Takeboki's, theirs is a job well
done." Publishers Weekly
"It is a beautiful story in
both text and
illustration. An intriguing range of
paper textures was employed in
creating all the collages where one
finds children playing and people
working. Two kinds of
Japanese/Buddhist gardens are
represented in the
mixed-media illustrations: the
Hill-and-Pond style garden and the Dry
Landscape garden. Due to the
sophisticated theme, this will find
its
greatest audience among older children
and young adults. It is a story
that would generate a lot of
discussion with middle and high school
students on a career day."
Children's
Literature
"'Our age,' wrote Simone Weil
just before her
death in 1943, 'has as its own
particular mission, or vocation, the
creation of a civilization founded
upon the spiritual nature of work.'
Yet today children grow up with few
models of individuals who love
their jobs and try each day to do them
to the best of their ability.
That's why this inspiring beautifully
illustrated book by Phillis
Gershator is so welcome." Spiritualityandpractice.com
The serenity of a Japanese temple
garden is captured in airy watercolor
and collage in this tribute to the
sustenance that is found in work and
beauty.... Each beautifully composed
page glows with clean color and
the delicate prints of origami paper.
Takeboki's gentle soul is central
both to the pictures and the spare
text. This is a satisfying and
thought-provoking book to share.
Highly recommended. Library
Media Connection, starred
review
Art by
Holly Meade
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