Min’s hopes are pinned to a few samples of his work, because he is careful and exacting and achieves excellence slowly. Then a royal emissary comes to town, looking for a potter deserving of a government commission.
Without ever being allowed to throw a pot himself, Tree-ear learns what he can about working the clay, appreciating graceful proportions, incising designs, and glazing pottery with the region’s rare and highly-prized celadon green. The backbreaking labor includes chopping and hauling cartloads of wood to burn in the kiln, cutting clay out of the ground, and draining it over and over until it is silky smooth. When Tree-ear breaks a piece of pottery, he begs to be allowed to pay for it by working for Min. Young Tree-ear pauses from scrounging food from other people’s garbage to watch the master potter Min throw a lump of clay on his wheel and shape it into a graceful urn.
The 2002 winner of the Newbery Medal takes us back to medieval Korea, where a crippled man and an orphaned boy live together under a bridge in the potters’ village of Ch’ulp’o.
0 kommentar(er)
