baileym1's Full Review: Jon J. Muth and Leo Tolstoy - The Three Questions
This book is done in beautiful water colors. These pictures so add to the dreamy quality of the book and the seriousness of the message. They add to the overall thoughtfulness that the book provokes.
Based on a story of Leo Tolstoy’s, the author introduces us to Nickolai. Nickolai wants to be a good person but doesn’t always know what the best way it to do it.
He essentially has three questions that he needs answered.
1. When is the best time to do things?
2. Who is the most important one?
3. What is the right thing to do?
So Nickolai sets out to ask his friends to help him answer these questions. He asks Sonya, the heron and googol, the monkey, and Pushkin, the dog. Each one has a completely different answer for each one. He knows his friends are doing their best to help him but he feels that their answers weren’t quite right.
He has a brainstorm. Maybe he can ask Leo the Turtle. Leo has lived for such a long time. He must know the answers to these questions. So he hikes up the mountain where Leo lives, all alone. When he arrives, Leo is digging a garden, so he puts his questions aside for a moment and helps Leo dig. It was much easier for a young boy to dig a garden than an old turtle.
After they have finished digging he asks his questions, but shortly after that a storm comes from nowhere. Nickolai hears a cry for help and he goes running through the trees and finds a panda bear that has been injured. He rushes her to safety and splints her leg. When she wakes up, she immediately asks for her child. Nickolai panics but goes running out into the storm again and finds her baby. The panda is wet and scared but alive so her cleans her up and makes her warm and then gives the baby to her mother, who cuddles her and loves her. Leo smiles in the background. The mother panda thanked Nickolai profusely and then Pushkin, Sonya, and Gogol arrive to make sure everyone is safe. Nickolai feels at peace with what he has done but realizes that he still has not found the answers he was looking for.
He asks Leo again, but Leo tells Nickolai that the questions have already been answered. Then Leo delineates those answers for him. When Nickolai arrived up the mountain, Leo was digging a garden. Nickolai helped him dig. He then helped the injured panda bear. He made baby and mother panda safe. In those simple acts, he has his answers. There is only one important time, and that is now. The most important person is the one whom you are with. The most important thing to do is to do good for the one at your side. The book ends with the sentence, “This is why we are here.”
The author includes an after note explaining how he adapted this story from a Leo Tolstoy story, how he changed the names, etc. The author really was quite clever in the ways that he adapted this story, and it was interesting to read why he made the changes that he made.
This book may be a little forced morally, but I can brush that off knowing it as adapted from a Tolstoy story. The overall lesson it teaches is irreplaceable—the idea of doing good in the world. Many of us question (as Nickolai did) what is the right thing to do. How do we live our lives morally and do the right thing? Many of us never find the answers, but Nickolai does. He is able to live his life and then take the lesson from his own actions. It is so important to teach children to help others. And not to sit back and wait for others to make changes because the time is NOW. The author doesn’t mean this in the way of the current trend of self gratification like the “Just Do It” mentality. What he means is that now is always the right time to act. We can’t wait patiently for others to take care of situations for us. We need to act right now. The reason we are here on this earth is to do kind things for those around us. Nickolai acts without thinking and ends up saving the pandas. He instinctively knows the “right” way to live his life and he acts upon this. Many of us are the same. We know the right things to do; we just get bogged down in thinking about these things and trying to get our big philosophical questions answered. But for some things, the answers are clear and right in front of our noses. We must act now to do kindnesses to those around us.
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