Picture Book #25--Lord of the Cranes

Title:  Lord of the Cranes

Author:  (retold by) Kerstin Chen

Illustrator:  Jian Jiang Chen

Grade Level Equivalent:  N/A
Lexile Measure:  N/A
Genre:  Children's Literature
Subgenre:  Traditional/Literature for a Diverse Society
Theme:  Do unto others as you would have done unto you.
Primary and Secondary Characters:  Tian, Wang
Awards:  N/A
Date of Publication:  2000
Publisher:  North-South Books
ISBN:  073581192X

Lord of the Cranes tells the story of Tian, a holy-type man who lives in Heaven and decides to come back to Earth to see how well people are treating others.  Disguised as a beggar, he finds an inn-keeper named Wang who kindly takes him in and feeds him, day after day, even though he has no money to pay for anything.  After weeks of being taken care of by Wang--who asks for nothing in return--Tian decides to pay him back by painting beautiful cranes on the walls of his inn.  These cranes were magical and with the clap of Tian's hands, the cranes leaped off the wall and performed an amazing dance.  Tian left the cranes and after a while, people were coming from all over China to see these wonderful dancing cranes, making Wang a rich man in the process.  One day, Tian comes back.  Without hesitation, Wang feeds him and offers him shelter.  Tian plays a beautiful song on a flute that came from Heaven and then he and the cranes disappear back to where they had came, asking Wang to pass along his incredible kindness.

This story reminds me a little of The Christmas Guest, a song I often hear around Christmas time.  In it, Jesus promises a man named Conrad that he will have Christmas dinner with him.  Three times, a stranger knocks on Conrad's door and three times it is not Jesus, but some lonely, poor soul.  Each time, though, Conrad helps the person by giving them food, shelter, warmth--whatever it was that they had come for.  In the end Conrad finds that the three strangers who had came to his door had been Jesus in disguise.  Jesus had wanted to test the kindness of Conrad.  Anyways, that's what this reminded me of.  It is a wonderful Chinese folk tale that really shows the Chinese culture.  The illustrations are very colorful and bright.  I think this would be great for a classroom.  It has a wonderful lesson--treat others the way you want to be treated--something that I think is often forgotten in classrooms today.  The story could spark a great discussion about what students would do if they were in Wang's situation.  Students could also participate in a writing assignment about the nicest or kindest thing they have done for someone else or that someone else has done for them.