He looks at the beautiful shard of pottery. He has told Min that he would take the creations to the commissioner. In despair, he holds one intricately embossed pottery shard. But on the way, Tree-ear is attacked and the pottery is broken.

Min creates several intricate vases and sends Tree-ear to the royal palace to present them to the high commissioner. He has a sense of beauty within himself.Īt this time a royal commissioner arrives at the village to grant a commission to create pottery for the emperor. After a period of time, he discovers that he can sense the shape he will make by merely touching the clay. Sometimes, he even shapes flowers and animals with molding clay. He studies how pottery is made and yearns to be a potter and use the pottery wheel. These fine traits build character in the boy. But Crane-man has schooled the youth in living an honest and honorable life.Īs a result, no matter how trying the situations Tree-ear finds himself, he always acts with courage and honor. Tree-ear knows the trials of poverty and occasionally wants to take shortcuts. Given hard work, Tree-ear works diligently at these difficult tasks. A local potter, Min, agrees to let him work at his pottery shop. There they eat their sparse meals together as they lovingly share their daily lives. Each day he takes his slim findings back to the bridge to share with Crane-man. In their poverty, both will show the virtues of courage and hope.Īs the story begins, Tree-ear is trying to rummage through garbage in their local village to find some food. In this book, we see an orphan boy named Tree-ear living under a bridge with Crane-man, an elderly handicapped man.

Linda Sue Park displays this in her Newbery-winning novel, “A Single Shard,” set in 12th century Korea. But her maternal commitment leads her to sacrifice herself.įrequently, there is another side to courage. It would be so much easier for this woman to simply lie down and sleep. Examples of this would be a mother walking her daughter to school despite having been up all night with an ill child. At other times, courage is seen in performing commonplace actions in daily life. People are considered courageous if they perform some kind of heroic act such as saving a person at an accident.

Clarion Books, New York, 2001, 180 pages, Grades 5-7.Ĭourage has many sides.

A single shard by linda sue park