Three Monks, No Water

by Ting-xing Ye

A young monk lives a simple life, meditating, tending to his vegetable garden and fetching water from a cold stream. Rain or shine, he never misses a day lugging this burden up the mountain to the temple. One day he invites a travelling monk to stay with him. Since they will share the water, they descend the mountain together to fetch it. Due to the difference in their heights, the men are unable to balance the shared load on their carrying pole without sloshing the contents of the two buckets all over the short monk. They manage to retrieve only a fraction of the water the young monk would have carried on his own, and not enough to care for the garden. Just as the young monk begins to see his guest as ungrateful, and the other monk begins to see his host as unreasonable, a third monk arrives.

Genres: Childrens, Picture Books

32 pages, Paperback

First published September 1, 1997

About the author

Ting-xing Ye, author of the best-selling memoir, A Leaf in the Bitter Wind, was born in Shanghai, China, in 1952, the fourth of five children born to a factory owner and his wife. At sixteen she was “sent down” to a prison farm during the Cultural Revolution, spending six years there before being admitted to Beijing University. She took a degree in English Literature, then began a seven year career as English interpreter for the national government in Shanghai. Ye came to Canada in 1987. She has been a child-care worker, bank clerk, and secretary. She published her first picture book in 1998. She also writes Young Adult fiction and non-fiction.

Reviews

[Brandy · Rating 5 out of 5]

It was a very cute book, the only issue I think is some harder words were useed. So if I little one was reading it, they may have issues. But the story over all is cute and the pictures are very pretty.