Don't Judge a Book by the Cover: A Single Shard by Linda Sue Park

A Single Shard by Linda Sue Park. Clarion, 2001.

Tree-ear’s yearning starts out a little rough—not deftly drawn—but soon I’m sucked into the story. I found this similar to Little House and Birchbark House, but about a boy and a different sort of land. The plot is stronger, more reminiscent of Katherine Paterson’s Sign of the Chrysanthemum. The voice is quite folktale, timeless, and the plot is tight but with a good many twists at the end. A stunning example of Park’s deft writing comes on page 52:

“The gentle curves of the vase, its mysterious green color. The sharp angles of the plum twigs, their blackness stark amid the airy white blossoms. The work of a human, the work of nature; clay from the earth, a branch from the sky. A kind of peace spread through Tree-ear, body and mind, as if while he looked at the vase and its branch, nothing could ever go wrong in the world.” 

Random note: the cover on my copy sucked big time: a scowling androgynous Asian with a wicker backpack against a sickly orange backdrop. Yick.

Rebecca Grabill

Rebecca has been writing since childhood, her first book about a kitten published between homemade cardboard covers in second grade. Although she studied religion and philosophy in university, she continued writing, earning an MFA from Hamline University and publishing multiple picture books (no longer with homemade covers) and a collection of poetry with a variety of New York and independent publishers. She has also published a wide array of fiction, essays, and poetry in magazines and journals and photographs for Getty Images. She balances writing with homeschooling the younger of her six children, launching her young adults, church activities, and overseeing a small flock of chickens in rural West Michigan.

www.rebeccagrabill.com
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