The Yellow Jar: 2 Tales from Japanese Tradition

From School Library Journal
Grade 5 Up-Writer and artist Atangan transforms two Japanese fables into an organically serene graphic novel reminiscent of the floating picture style seen in traditional Japanese prints. The title story follows greedy but devoted Nikotuchi in his quest to rescue his estranged wife from the demon warrior Hoso No Kami. "The Yellow Jar" far outweighs the second story in literary quality and reader appeal. "Two Chrysanthemum Maidens" follows the plights of two blossom sisters who at first are mistaken for weeds. However, after they flower, overwrought onlookers separate them, and each in turn pines for the other's company. Atangan's lively drawings and keen sense of detail make for a potentially exciting read, but younger readers might mistake the graphics' muted ink tones as bland instead of exciting. Also, both stories' anticlimactic endings read more like morals than the traditional good versus evil graphic novels, which will no doubt disappoint teen audiences. Still, readers may be drawn to the characters' lively faces and the action sequences.Hillias J. Martin, New York Public LibraryCopyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.


From Booklist
The comic book has been a foremost medium of literary adaptation since the 1940s success of Classics Illustrated. Comics adaptations have been notably truer to their sources than their principal rival, the movies, though often less than graphically distinguished. To render two magical Japanese legends, one about a fisherman who discovers a fair maiden in a big pot, the other about a monk whose fastidiously kept garden is invaded by two chrysanthemums, Atangan charmingly adopts the sharp outlines, boldly juxtaposed color fields, and striking compositions of eighteenth-century Japanese woodblock prints. He compensates a palette restricted mostly to earth tones with plenty of action that, eschewing martial-arts-like violence, is appropriate to the fairy-tale-like narratives. Ray Olson
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved


Book Description
Introducing the delightfully precise and beautifully designed art of Patrick Atangan in a new series of adaptations of traditional Asian tales. This book, drawn in the ukiyo-e style (world of floating pictures), presents "The Yellow Jar" which centers around a simple fisherman and a beautiful maiden he takes as wife, after finding her in a magic jar. However, she is abducted by a demon warrior considerably more powerful than the simple fisherman. But the fisherman¹s resolve, even after many unsuccessful attempts to rescue her, does not flinch... In "Two Chrysanthemum Maidens", a monk is faced with two rather strange wild flowers in his carefully tended garden. They are wild and have planted themselves there at will. They are weeds but they are lovely like women.


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Gr 5 Up-Writer and artist Atangan transforms two Japanese fables into an organically serene graphic novel reminiscent of the floating picture style seen in traditional Japanese prints. The title story follows greedy but devoted Nikotuchi in his quest to rescue his estranged wife from the demon warrior Hoso No Kami. "The Yellow Jar" far outweighs the second story in literary quality and reader appeal. "Two Chrysanthemum Maidens" follows the plights of two blossom sisters who at first are mistaken for weeds. However, after they flower, overwrought onlookers separate them, and each in turn pines for the other's company. Atangan's lively drawings and keen sense of detail make for a potentially exciting read, but younger readers might mistake the graphics' muted ink tones as bland instead of exciting. Also, both stories' anticlimactic endings read more like morals than the traditional good versus evil graphic novels, which will no doubt disappoint teen audiences. Still, readers may be drawn to the characters' lively faces and the action sequences.-Hillias J. Martin, New York Public Library Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.


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