5/20/2023 0 Comments M by Jon J. Muth![]() nope that still sounds bleak, doesn’t it? Well it’s not true anyway. Inspired by his own young twins, Muth, with seeming effortlessness, brings to young readers a fellow traveler. From a snowball on a stop sign (“are we in trouble?”) to act of accidentally killing a bug (“afterward / feeling alone and Sad”) the haikus do double duty as both poems and, depending on which word is capitalized, a tour of the alphabet. In the book, a panda cub named Koo and two human siblings explore fall, winter, spring and autumn in a myriad of different ways. ![]() ![]() Twenty-six haikus spotlight four different seasons. ![]() Maybe that’s part of the reason I like it so very much. Gutsy in its quiet, contemplative way, Muth doesn’t follow the same old, same old poetry model. All that changes with the publication of Hi, Koo!: A Year of Seasons. And though he’s written many a book touching on the concept of “Zen”, straight up poetry has rarely been his bag. Muth is no stranger to children’s picture books that challenge the reader. So what happens when 5/7/5 gets taken out of the equation entirely? Author/illustrator Jon J. ![]() Traditional haiku focuses on nature and how we, as humans, relate to it. She’s Japanese-American herself, and one thing she simply cannot stand is when someone takes a set of words, slaps them into five/seven/five syllable lines, and then calls the result “a haiku”. I have a colleague who is mighty careful when it comes to haiku. ![]()
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