John Lewis (10)

This is a children's book, but I bought it for myself at a library sale, intending to keep it even if it was rejected by the wife and kids. That rejection, of course, never happened. Anyway, about the book. If you're not familiar with Chinese characters, a number of them seem to have evolved from pictures. For example, in the traditional Chinese character for horse you can make out the four legs, the one for man looks like someone walking, etc. (The character for righteousness is the character for "I" under the character for "lamb", but that's another story.) Anyway, Mr. Lewis has written three short tales involving some of the more obvious characters and Mr. Rigby has done up some marvelous illustrations, subtly changing the character into a more recognizable picture that still evokes the style of Chinese calligraphy. How many characters either I or my children end up learning from this book, I don't know. But I do know we've had quite
a good time enjoying the tales and illustrations. As I intended, this one has gone on my shelf.
--J.… (mais)