It may best be understood as a feeling, rather than as an idea.” Remarkably, Reibstein and Young capture the essence of all of this with clarity, elegance and a kind of indirection that seems intrinsic to the subject. It finds beauty and harmony in what is simple, imperfect, natural, modest and mysterious. Eliot’s “Four Quartets”: “We shall not cease from exploration / And the end of all our exploring / Will be to arrive where we started / And know the place for the first time.”īut while the plot of “Wabi Sabi” is simple, its purpose is demanding: to present an elusive concept with origins “in ancient Chinese ways of understanding and living, known as Taoism and Zen Buddhism.” As Reibstein puts it: “Wabi sabi is a way of seeing the world that is at the heart of Japanese culture. Tolkien’s hobbits, it’s a reliable formula, famously summarized in T.S.

Like these stories, Mark Reibstein’s “Wabi Sabi” - chosen this fall as a New York Times Best Illustrated Children’s Book - has a familiar scenario: a cat named Wabi Sabi seeks her name’s meaning, elicits various responses and comes home wiser. “Lon Po Po: A Red-Riding Hood Story From China” (1989) won him a Caldecott Medal with its dramatic pictures (including a particularly fearsome wolf), creatively enhanced by the thematic use of light and shadow - which also resonates in his dedication: “To all the wolves of the world for lending their good name as a tangible symbol for our darkness.” He added a dimension to the Indian fable of the blind men and the elephant with “Seven Blind Mice”: Six mice, in rainbow colors, misconstrue the bits of the elephant they touch, but the seventh - white, like unrefracted light - explores the whole and grasps the truth. In a long, distinguished career, Ed Young has often conveyed the depth of apparently simple stories through his illustrations.

Wabi sabi ed young