A single shard [electronic resource], by Linda Sue Park. Listening Library, 2007.

I downloaded this Newbery Medal winner a long time ago, and only just now listened to it when I began walking again.

Set in the medieval Korean village of Ch'ulp'o, where potters make the celebrated celadon ware, Tree Ear, an orphan lives under a bridge with Crane Man, who is homeless because an injured leg prevents him from working. He scavenges for food in junk-heaps to feed them both, and Crane Man provides wisdom and stories. One day, while rummaging through the potter Min's junk heap, Tree Ear happens to see Min throwing a vase on a wheel and becomes fascinated with the potter's craft. He steals into Min's house and accidentally breaks a greenware box. Min exacts nine days work from him in payment, and thus begins Tree Ear's - and the reader's - education in the production of celadon pottery and the society that supported it. Here is an image of the prunus vase mentioned in the last paragraphs of the book.

Although this is a children's book, the audio version, at least, is also appealing to adults. It would be a good discussion book because of the descriptions of the pottery processes and of Korean medieval society.