The book beautifully adapts Leo Tolstoy's original story, bringing it, as Muth himself notes, to a younger audience. And it is an important story to bring to this demographic. The story, both Tolstoy's and Muth's, revolves around three questions asked by the main characters: When is the best time to do things?; Who is the most important one?; What is the right thing to do?
Young Nikolai asks these questions of his animal friends, before heading off to see the wise old turtle Leo, and becoming embroiled in a situation that finally provides the answers he's sought. It's gentle, beautiful, and very quick to read. But it's not so quick to leave the mind. As with most Zen stories, the tale invited contemplation, and application, in one's own life.
As far as the art goes, it's goddamn ridiculously beautiful. It's Jon J. Muth, for crying out loud. His Mythology of an Abandoned City is easily one of my favourite comics I've read. The book is every bit as rewarding as a piece of visual art as it is a story. Indeed, Muth's background in comics does rear it's head somewhat, in that the pictures we see are not simply illustrations of the words on the page. For example, when the dog, Pushkin, says that the right thing to do is "fighting," the picture shows him leaping up a tree and barking at Gogol the monkey. It's this narrative mixture of visual and verbal that makes comics, and that makes this storybook more graphic novel than picture book.
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