The Realm of Imagination

by Ruskin Bond

  Muhammad said to Parks, “Universal peace and brotherly love [are] two things the white man will never be able to accept.” But Parks did not agree with the idea that blacks and whites could not live together. He admired the philosophy of Martin Luther King, Jr., who preached that God’s great capacity for love included both black and white. The assassination of Dr. King in 1968, however, tested his faith in racial harmony.

  The nation was in turmoil when Life sent Parks to photograph Dr. King’s funeral. Parks expressed his anger and despair to Life readers when he wrote of the fallen leader: “He spent the last dozen years of his life preaching love to men of all colors. And for all this, a man, white like you, blasted a bullet through his neck. And in doing so the madman has just about eliminated the last symbol of peace between us.”

  Parks said afterwards, “My words stared back at me when I saw them in cold print the following Monday, and I realized that my anguish had swept me dangerously close to hatred.”

  Later in 1968, after twenty years with the magazine, Parks left Life to make a movie of his first book, The Learning Tree, about his childhood in Fort Scott. He became the first African American to produce, direct, and write screenplays for major Hollywood productions. Always curious, he never quit reaching out in new directions. He took up painting, wrote six volumes of poetry, and composed music, including a symphony and a ballet. At age ninety-three, he published his twenty-first and twenty-second books. He died a few months later, on March 7, 2006.

  People asked Parks again and again, “How did you learn to do so many things so well?” Parks credited those who, regardless of their color, became his teachers and helped him overcome the racism that threatened to keep him down. He did not finish high school, but in his life Parks was honored with thousands of awards and tributes, along with more than fifty honorary doctorate degrees from colleges and universities around the world.

  “I picked up a camera because it was my choice of weapons against what I hated most about the universe: racism, intolerance, poverty,” Parks said. “I could have just as easily picked up a knife or a gun, like many of my childhood friends did … most of whom were murdered or put in prison … but I chose not to go that way. I felt that I could somehow subdue these evils by doing something beautiful that people recognize me by, and thus make a whole different life for myself, which has proved to be so.”

  “The camera was not meant to just show misery,” he said on another occasion. “You can show beauty with it; you can do a lot of things. You can shows things you like about the universe, things you hate about the universe. It’s capable of doing both.”

  Born into a life dominated by poverty and racism, Parks turned stumbling blocks into inspiration and used his camera to build understanding among people by exposing the differences that separated them. Gordon Parks spent his life growing bigger than Life.

  Instead of the War Drum

  The Story of Ashoka

  by Uma Krishnaswami

  Illustrated by Olwyn Whelan

  In ancient India in the second century B.C., war drums beat loudly and often in the land of King Ashoka. He fought many battles and conquered many neighboring kingdoms. As a result, his domain stretched from west to east, across the entire Indian subcontinent, and deep into the south. His power was fearsome, and his name was known throughout the ancient world. His enemies trembled before the might of his armies.

  The eastern kingdom of Kalinga dared to resist Ashoka’s power, so in about 261 B.C., King Ashoka decided to attack this defiant rival. It is said that the dust raised by foot soldiers, horses, and war elephants darkened the bright sky.

  The battle was long, and many thousands died. The armies fought fiercely, with sword and spear and arrows flying swiftly. Ashoka was victorious, and the kingdom of Kalinga was utterly defeated.

  The story goes that Ashoka walked the battlefield that night, glorying in his victory. As the sun set, a man came up to him, carrying the body of his soldier son. “O King,” said the man, “you are so powerful. You have taken many lives. Will you give this one back to me?”

  Ashoka was startled. He said to the man, “How can you ask me to do this? You know it is impossible.”

  The man persisted. “Surely not for such a great king as you. This was my only son. I am asking you for one life, only one, among the thousands you have taken, Mighty Ruler.”

  Ashoka looked about him at the scene of battle. The man’s words struck him like a thunderclap. He realized he had indeed taken many lives. His soldiers, following his orders, had taken many more. Yet he could not give back a single one of them. His heart filled with remorse, and he turned back to the man but found himself speaking to the darkening sky. The man had vanished.

  Some say the king dreamed this very vivid dream. Others say the incident really took place, and the grieving father was the Buddha himself, who had come to teach an arrogant king a lesson. No one knows if this story is mythical or based on an actual event. History tells us that after the battle of Kalinga, Ashoka did become a faithful Buddhist, following the path of peace and nonviolence. Sickened by war, he vowed that from that time onward he would use his armies only in defense of his kingdom. He swore he would never take aggressive action against a neighboring land. In truth, he never did.

  “Instead of the sound of the war drum,” Ashoka declared, “the sound of Buddha’s teachings, or Dhamma, will be heard.” Ashoka turned his attention to the welfare of his people. He built hospitals for the sick and rest houses for travelers in his land. He urged all the people to join with him in following the path of peace. Feeling that all killing was wrong, he even stopped eating meat. It was during his reign that Buddhism spread through South and Southeast Asia. Ashoka’s own son and daughter went to the island we now call Sri Lanka, bearing with them the Buddha’s teachings.

  Ashoka put up pillars and rocks all across the land with inscriptions about the Buddha’s rules for living a righteous life. He appointed officials whose job it was to travel the land and ensure that people lived in harmony. While he himself favored the teachings of Buddhism, he made it clear through his inscriptions that he honored and respected all religions and called upon his subjects to do the same. In many ways, he was far ahead of his time — perhaps even of ours!

  Today, the government of India uses two images from Ashoka’s reign as national symbols: the chakra, a wheel with twenty-four spokes, is the central design element in the flag of modern India, and a statue of four lions, each facing one of the four directions, can be seen on India’s currency.

  The Telescope

  by Lisa Harries Schumann

  Illustrated by Bryn Barnard

  Once upon a time there lived a young king named Fensgar in a land near the top of the world. Winters in that land were long, and during the darkest, loneliest time of one particular winter, the king felt the whole realm was frozen with boredom. It seemed to him the streets were silent as everyone sat numbly indoors, and the woods were still while all the creatures slept.

  On a stormy, frigid day, King Fensgar wandered through room after room of his castle, searching for anything that might intrigue him. He listlessly examined trinkets in cabinets and baubles in chests. He stopped by the kitchen, where the cooks were chopping up root vegetables, and stared into the pots that bubbled on the huge stove. “Vegetable soup again?”

  “Yes, Your Majesty,” the cooks replied, bowing.

  The king sighed and continued his meanderings until he came to the castle library. There he sank into a velvet chair by the fire. He absent-mindedly pulled a leather-bound tome off the nearest shelf and opened it.

  It was an atlas. The paper was yellowed with age, but the maps were colored in vibrant inks. Mountain ranges were in blue, and their tips had been dotted with white. Islands like emeralds were strewn in turquoise water. Deserts were sand-gold, and the wide plains grass-green. Cities were depicted as tiny houses with red walls surrounding them. Each page was covered in names he tried to say aloud: “Ulanibad. Fortunba
lia. Wrinkly Coe.” Each name tickled his tongue. “Tokado. Gurunth. Balfish. Quagly.”

  Toward the end of the book was a map of Norland, his own kingdom. Even the images on the page looked icy to him. He glanced up at the library windows. Sharp needles of snow pinged against the glass.

  King Fensgar did not linger over the map of Norland. He moved on to pages where roads like silver ribbons threaded through coppery savannas, villages nestled on forest-green hills, lakes of sapphire seemed to sparkle. He was enthralled by the maps.

  As he reached the last page, he was about to shut the book and start all over again when he discovered a tiny knob in its thick spine. He pulled it, and a drawer opened. In it lay a slender telescope the length of a pen. The king put the telescope to his eye and looked around the library, but he saw only a blur.

  Deep in the castle, the dinner gong sounded. “Vegetable soup again,” King Fensgar groaned. He placed the telescope carefully in its drawer and put the book back on the shelf.

  The next morning, King Fensgar settled into the library chair. Outside the windows, the blizzard that had begun the day before raged on. He opened the atlas and once more looked through the telescope, this time pointing it toward a map of islands off a shoreline. It was as if the telescope leaped to life: No longer did he see merely a blur, but rather the clear outlines of an island. As the focus sharpened, the color of the island changed from the emerald hue of the ink to a lush tropical green. To his astonishment, the king saw trees and a strip of sand at the shore.

  King Fensgar turned the page and aimed the telescope toward a town on the coast named Baboniki. He saw small, white houses with red-tiled roofs on the slopes above the sea. Cobblestone streets ran between the houses. Gardens in courtyards were filled with flowers of lemon yellow, lavender, and scarlet.

  The king gasped. Tiny figures moved about the page! There was a woman with a scarf on her head and a basket under her arm. A boy pulled a donkey. An old man sat in a chair and whittled. Five little children were holding hands and dancing in a ring. Baboniki was alive with color and motion. The telescope was a minuscule window into those faraway worlds.

  The king wanted to know each and every place on each and every map. Through the telescope he saw great cities brimming with lights in the evenings. He saw frothing streams plunging down mountainsides. In Utande on page 32, farmers in broad-brimmed hats bent over fields, picking deep purple fruits. In the village of Rezin of the land of Fania on page 104, he saw women in long robes pulling up buckets from a well. In the Sea of Estamadrol on page 16, men in brightly painted fishing boats pulled nets heavy with catch out of the water. And high up on the mountain pass of Kardan on page 59, the king saw a dragon saunter out of its cave, stretch its shimmering wings, and warm its gray-green scales in the wintry sun. The king saw its breath come rhythmically out of its nostrils, condensing into small clouds of steam. When he placed the telescope back in its drawer at the end of the day, the king thought, What a splendid diversion from this frozen land of mine!

  Winter settled deeper over Fensgar’s kingdom. The ice that covered the lakes and ponds grew as thick as the castle walls. For many days snow fell and blanketed the forests, the villages, and the castle.

  As winter wore on, the king spent his days eagerly studying the atlas. Each land was filled with countless interesting features. But the maps he returned to most frequently were the mountain pass on page 59 and the town of Baboniki on page 53. The dragon often sat placidly by its cave, and in Baboniki he saw the same people going about their daily lives: men talking in clusters, children playing, the old man sitting on his chair, whittling. The king felt he knew them, although he had only observed and could not hear them or speak to them.

  One morning as he watched, a group of about one hundred men dressed in blue jackets rode out of Baboniki on black horses. With the telescope he followed them as they rode, bows slung over their shoulders and quivers of arrows on their backs. In subsequent days, the king checked the men’s progress as they moved off the map of Baboniki on page 53 and through the plains and forests on pages 54 to 58. He sucked in his breath as he watched them move up the mountain pass of Kardan, where the dragon lived. How little I know, he thought. Will the dragon, who has always seemed so peaceful, eat those men? Or are the men from Baboniki on their way to kill it? Either way, the outcome struck the king as calamitous. There was nothing he could do … nothing but watch.

  On the high mountain pass, surrounded by peaks covered in snow, the men in blue jackets rode their dark horses. The dragon was nowhere to be seen. Then, approaching from the other side of the mountain, an army of men in red coats appeared. The sun glinted off their spears. And so, far away from King Fensgar, a battle between the two armies began. The king screamed at them to stop, but his words did not carry through the paper. Never had he felt so helpless. He slammed the book shut.

  And my own kingdom? he thought with a start. Perhaps I know nothing about it, either. Perhaps it, too, is in peril? He opened the atlas to the map of Norland. Gray mountains circled the land, indigo streams ran down the slopes to end in slate-blue lakes and ponds. The one patch of bright color was the red of the small town where his castle stood. He put the telescope to his eye.

  It was twilight in Norland. In the town at the foot of the castle, peddlers were pulling their wares on sleds through the streets. Figures, their scarfs fluttering behind them, were skating on the lake that lay between the town and the forest. Near the woods, a bonfire blazed with a crowd gathered around it, roasting apples on the ends of sticks. People are out in the winter, the king thought, and I knew nothing of it.

  Then, in a forest clearing, the king saw a hut with drifts of snow up to its windows. Outside the door, seated on the snow, a boy sat with his head on his knees and his shoulders shaking.

  The child is crying, the king thought, and he ran out of the library.

  He ordered that his sleigh be readied. Then he rode out into the snow, the way lit by torches. The coachman drove King Fensgar past the peddlers, the skaters, and the crowd at the bonfire, all of them turning and cheering when they saw the royal sleigh. It raced down a forest path into the deepening dark until it reached the hut where the boy still sat outside the door. As the king got off the sleigh, the boy lifted his face, which was wet with tears and red with cold.

  “Child, why do you cry?” King Fensgar asked.

  “My mother and father and baby sister are sick, and there is no one but me to care for them.”

  “But why are you outside, sitting in the snow?”

  “I do not want them to see I’m scared.”

  “Come,” the king said, taking the boy’s hand in his. “Let us go inside.”

  The hut was lit by a fire, and two beds were pulled close to its warmth. On one lay a man, and on the other a woman and a baby. As the king bent toward them, he saw that their faces were pale and thin and their eyes seemed barely to see him. “I have nothing left but water to give them,” the boy said. At that, King Fensgar went out to the coachman and told him to go back to the castle for the court doctor, blankets, and pots of vegetable soup. Then the king returned inside, where he sat, long after the doctor arrived to examine the invalids and had gone, until the parents were well enough to see the boy and smile.

  For weeks the atlas sat untouched on the library shelf while the king rode through his kingdom. He stocked his sleigh with potatoes to roast in the bonfires, carried his skates with him so he could join the laughing people on the frozen ponds, and brought pots of vegetable soup for the boy and his family. But one day, after dancing in a ring with a group of children in the square near his castle, King Fensgar could no longer bear not knowing what had become of the people of Baboniki.

  He sat once again on the chair in his library. He turned the pages of the atlas slowly to page 59, where he looked through the telescope at the mountain pass of Kardan. No trace of the battle was left, but faint clouds of steam emerged from the cave.

  He flipped back to page 53 to look at
Baboniki. The old man still whittled, the children played, and men in blue jackets walked through the streets. “What happened?” King Fensgar longed to ask them.

  He shut the book and walked to his desk. Using his most colorful inks and elegant calligraphy, King Fensgar wrote a letter. As soon as the spring melt was far enough along that the mountains encircling Norland were passable, the king gave his letter to a messenger … who rode a horse over the mountains, across the winding rivers, and through the wide green plains to deliver the letter to the people of Baboniki.

  The Tale of Paddy Ahern

  Retold by Patricia McHugh

  Illustrated by Lee White

  There once was a lad named Paddy Ahern who trod the green hills of Limerick, Ireland, offering to help farmers with their chores in return for food and lodging. Trudging uphill and down over the country roads, day after day, wore Paddy’s shoes so thin that sometimes he wondered if he shouldn’t have apprenticed to be a shoemaker. But that would have been inside work, and Paddy preferred fresh air and sunshine.

  Young Paddy was slight of build, but strong. He had a pleasant face, though his short, brown hair, which he cut himself, stuck out here and there under his cap. His tweed jacket may have been a mite small, but Paddy kept it clean, taking care to brush off the dust at the end of each day’s work. However, in spite of his earnest appearance, no one wanted to hire poor Paddy.

  Indeed, the farmers much admired the fields Paddy plowed, the long rows of potatoes he planted, and the hay that he stacked. Yet there were some things the wandering lad could not do. He could not tell stories, nor sing songs, nor play the flute or fiddle to entertain the farmers. And the farmers needed that, too.