A Single Shard
'Delightful' Philip Pullman
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- ¥500
発行者による作品情報
‘Delightful... I read the novel with enormous pleasure and admiration.’ PHILIP PULLMAN
A SPECIAL 20TH ANNIVERSARY EDITION OF THIS AWARD-WINNING TALE ABOUT THE POWER OF PERSEVERANCE BY THE BESTSELLING AUTHOR OF A LONG WALK TO WATER
13-year-old Tree-ear lives in a Korean village famous for its ceramics. He doesn’t have much but he loves to watch master potter Min at work and dreams of learning the craft one day.
Reluctantly Min agrees to let Tree-ear help him. Determined to do whatever it takes to prove himself, Tree-ear embarks on a dangerous journey to present his master’s work to the king, unaware it will change his life forever.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Park (Seesaw Girl) molds a moving tribute to perseverance and creativity in this finely etched novel set in mid- to late 12th-century Korea. In Ch'ul'po, a potter's village, Crane-man (so called because of one shriveled leg) raises 10-year-old orphan Tree Ear (named for a mushroom that grows "without benefit of "parent-seed"). Though the pair reside under a bridge, surviving on cast-off rubbish and fallen grains of rice, they believe "stealing and begging... made a man no better than a dog." From afar, Tree Ear admires the work of the potters until he accidentally destroys a piece by Min, the most talented of the town's craftsmen, and pays his debt in servitude for nine days. Park convincingly conveys how a community of artists works (chopping wood for a communal kiln, cutting clay to be thrown, etc.) and effectively builds the relationships between characters through their actions (e.g., Tree Ear hides half his lunch each day for Crane-man, and Min's soft-hearted wife surreptitiously fills the bowl). She charts Tree Ear's transformation from apprentice to artist and portrays his selflessness during a pilgrimage to Songdo to show Min's work to the royal court he faithfully continues even after robbers shatter the work and he has only a single shard to show. Readers will not soon forget these characters or their sacrifices. Ages 10-14.
