Read about this in the New York Times: children's book based on a Japanese philosophical aesthetic with pictures created from hand-made paper collages, and it stars a cat. I gave it as a gift to a friend who is obsessed with A) paper making, B) Japanese art and C) cats. So it was a pretty good gift.The artwork is beautiful and the story lyrical and unusual. But I don't know how much a kid would actually get out of (or into) it -- wabi-sabi (侘寂) represents a comprehensive Japanese world view or aesthetic centered on the acceptance of transience. The aesthetic is sometimes described as one of beauty that is "imperfect, impermanent and incomplete" (WIKIPEDIA'D!). That is almost as exciting as Spongebob, but not quite.It seems more like a book made for, well, adults who are obsessed with A) paper making, B) Japanese art and C) cats.
