Crane Maiden
Written by Brenda Peterson and illustrated by Ed Young
Crane Maiden is a love story symbolized by the cranes of Asia on the human soul. It is told totally in shadow play. The illustrated book, is published by Chin Music Press. It is also on display as an animated exhibit in the Eric Carle Museum in Amherst, Massachusetts, from June 25 to December 31, 2022.
People flock from around the world to witness the red-crowned cranes dance their feathered ballet—they bow, cries plaintive, legs lifting in a mellifluous blur of bird, snow, and sky. Details of their dance mesmerize. Downy heads with crimson caps, black-edged wingspans so wide, fluttering. Thin legs in a delicate two-step, endless, elegant necks entwined. Mated lifelong.
Artist’s Note
Taoism is an ancient philosophy of nature, simplicity, and humor. Their “interplay of energy makes harmony,” writes Lao Tzu in his classic Tao Te Ching. Just as in physics, the positive and negative magnetic fields synthesize and work as a whole.
In China, cranes are symbolic creatures of nature. They bring good fortune and rain to crops and wetlands, as well as flood and destruction. Good and evil coexist in this Taoist balancing act. So red-crowned cranes embody both extremes, like the cosmos, or a vessel that can be perceived as half empty or half full.
How will we choose to live, to dance?
Ed Young has illustrated more than a hundred books for children. A graduate of the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, Young has taught at the Pratt Institute, Yale University, Naropa University, and the University of California at Santa Cruz. In 1990, his book Lon Po Po was awarded the Caldecott Medal. He has also received two Caldecott honors—for The Emperor and the Kite and Seven Blind Mice—and was twice nominated for the Hans Christian Andersen Award, the highest international recognition given to children’s book authors and illustrators who have made a lasting contribution to children’s literature. In 2020, Young received the Chen Bochui International Children’s Literature Author of the Year Award, and a new museum of children’s literature is opening in China featuring his art. Young lives in Westchester County, New York.
Brenda Peterson is the author of more than twenty-three books of fiction and nonfiction for adults and children, rooted in nature and animals. Her children’s books include Leopard & Silkie: One Boy’s Quest to Save Seal Pups (a finalist for the Beverly Cleary Award, and a selection by Scholastic Book Fair and National Science Teaching Association), Lobos: A Wolf Family Returns to the Wild (finalist Green Earth Book Award), Wild Orca: The Oldest, Wisest Whale in the World (Junior Library Guild Gold Standard Award), and Catastrophe by the Sea with Ed Young. Her recent adult book Wolf Nation: The Life, Death, and Return of Wild American Wolves, was named a “Best Conservation Book of the Year” by Forbes magazine. Peterson’s work has appeared on NPR and in the New York Times, Christian Science Monitor, Chicago Tribune, Seattle Times, and Oprah magazine.
“Transformed by crane music, they wander into a parallel world, become birds.”
