A Single Shard

My first book I want to introduce is called "A Single Shard". The main character is named Tree- ear who is an orphan boy and he likes to watch Min who is a Master potter making pottery and who lived in the twelfth century. For a very long time he has lived in a town called Ch'ulp'o with Crane-man barely living with a little bit of food. However one day Tree-ear sneaked into the workplace when Min was not there. He investigated the whole workshop and he spots one particular box and opened it. However at that moment Min spotted him and Tree-ear accidentally broke it,  being very surprised by getting caught by Min. Now he has to work for the Master (Min) to pay the damage he has made. From that moment and on, Tree-ear is searching for his dreams. He continues to work even though the days are over to work for the master. Min  and his wife gives him plentiful of three meals for him to  eat. However he saves half of it and gives it to Crane-man. The days are now improving on him.


It is very unlikely to have one Master potter in a village. Another honorable potter people know in the village is a Master potter called Kang. He has lots of ideas on his pottery, and Tree-ear always checks out on what he is doing and tries to figure out his ideas. He's dying to tell Min about these ideas but he considers it of "stealing" someones idea. Kang is working on something very special, which explains why Tree-ear started the spying. He also noticed that an emissary, named Kim came along on a boat to choose a Master potter to show the King's court his work. Now Tree-ear understood why Kang and Min were working on their pot so hard- to impress the emissary. Kim looked at Kang's display the longest which made some potters give up. He then looked at Min's and he seemed pleased.

Kim had finally made a decision to spend more time visiting the potters whose work most interested him.

Min does not care on what Kang is doing but concentrates on his own ability. Meanwhile, Tree-ear tries to help and do his best for Min and his pot. However one day, Min's wife told Tree-ear that Min needed more clay. Her face told him that something was wrong. He soon figured out that lots of pieces were laying on the ground which meant that Min had smashed his own vases with frustration.

Surprisingly, Kim had came earlier than they had expected, and had to choose Kang having no choice. However,
Kim had still asked if Min could bring his work to Kim. Tree-ear had volunteered to bring it to where Kim was. It was a long  and dangerous journey for him...

While he was more then half way, he met some robbers and ended up having the vases smashed. Tree-ear still carried on with the broken vases. When he arrived to Kim, (who was ALOT disappointed) I was not sure if he described that the robbers broke it. When he came back, he was heard that Crane-man had died because of a sudden heart attack.So, from now on Tree-ear had to live with Min and his wife.He was now called Hyung-pill because Min-used to have a son but he died.

Even though lots of things happened, it was a great book. :-)