Wabi Sabi by Mark Reibstein, Illustrated by Ed Young

Wabi Sabi by Mark Reibstein is a strikingly beautiful picture book that addresses a fundamental tenet in Japanese culture.  A Kyoto house cat is called wabi sabi after the Japanese aesthetic ideal of the same name.  On the title page, Reibstein defines wabi sabi as “a way of seeing the world that is at the heart of Japanese culture.  It finds beauty and harmony in what is simple, imperfect, natural, modest, and mysterious.  It can be a little dark, but it is also warm and comfortable.  It may best be understood as a feeling, rather than as an idea.”

Wabi Sabi, the cat, sets out through the streets of Kyoto in a quest to discover the meaning of her name.  She travels across an urban landscape and enters a wooded park where she discusses the meaning of wabi sabi with a wise monkey.   At a prominent Kyoto shrine, Wabi Sabi “ found the place to be very beautiful – in a wabi sabi kind of way.  Although the buildings and gardens were shaped by humans, they were neither fancy nor grand.”  In the end, the cat returns to the simple straw mat of her kitchen, content and warm.

This ambitious text is uneven.  The inclusion of haiku into the narrative flow is occasionally successful.  When the cat receives a cup of tea, she feels
“A warm heavy bowl
comfortable as an old friend –
not fine, smooth china.”
However, I find that the prose is generally disrupted by the clumsy inclusion of haiku that does not deepen or forward the text.  In addition, to my ear, even when eliminating most of the jarring haiku, the text itself is not smooth and might not be appropriate as a read-aloud.  Finally, I am somewhat confused about the potential audience for the upper level content of the story.  Unless they have an existing cultural grounding and understanding of wabi sabi, younger children might indeed remain unclear about this aesthetic ideal.  Reibstein makes allusions to the wabi sabi definition rather than offering explicit explanation.  I strongly disagree with the Barnes and Noble age range notation that this challenging book is targeted for infants (!) or children in preschool.  Older children will find more enjoyment and comprehension in this text.

With this caveat on the narrative content of the book, I heartily recommend Wabi Sabi for its phenomenal art.  Ed Young has created another glorious chapter in his magnificent portfolio of children’s illustrations and the publisher has augmented Young’s art with Japanese kanji haikus and chop style formats for the author and illustrator credits.  Illustrator of more than eighty books, Young won the Caldecott Medal for Lon Po Po in 1989 and has twice received Caldecott Honors for Seven Blind Mice and Yeh Shen.  Wabi Sabi has reaped numerous honors including recognition by the American Library Association and the New York Times Book Review as a notable children’s book. 

In homage to Asian scrolls and literary norms, Young’s marvelous collages are oriented vertically.  Using a broad range of found and natural materials from his home, Young creates a rich, textured, three-dimensional quality to his illustrations.  The result is impactful and engaging.  The work is an amazing accomplishment considering the fact that Young completed this assignment under a short deadline after his initial two-year project of Wabi Sabi illustrations disappeared!  Young had already discarded his original, high-quality and purpose-selected art materials, so he “decided to use wabi sabi materials” and ferreted out resources as varied as dryer lint and corn husks to create his magnificent art.
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