‘Splash!’
A Pond, a Poet, and Three Pests
by Caroline Adderson (illustrated by Lauren Tamaki)
Toronto: Groundwood Books, 2025
$21.99 / 9781773068930
Reviewed by Brett Josef Grubisic
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At first glance, a kids’ picture book about Matsuo Bashō, the Japanese poetry sensei who died in Osaka in 1684, might come across as a bit professorial.
After all, in the candy-coloured, hyperkinetic world of “content” for kids, whether video games (eg, Princess Peach: Showtime!, which has sold in the millions since 2024) or pre-schooler streaming animation (eg, Bluey, about a family of dogs, with 50.5 billion minutes watched, to date), Bashō’s 1680 haiku—“On a withered branch / A crow has alighted: / Nightfall in autumn”—could appear to have all the thrills of an onerous homework assignment.
Immense credit is due to Vancouver’s Caroline Adderson, though. Her lively and amusing picture book, A Pond, a Poet, and Three Pests, is a marvel in miniature, with an educative intent that’s stimulating and funny while also thoughtful and illustrative.
In her hands a topic that could have become an enervating teaching module—say, World Literary History: Poetic Form—is treated nimbly, with fun in mind along with a clever approach to classroom-worthy material. Kids will enjoy it, and so will adults.
Drawn by Lauren Tamaki with flowing, calligraphy-like strokes and colours in rich blues, greens, and yellow (and magenta, in the case of waterlily flowers) that evoke the flowing character of watercolour, each page is moodily expressive and strikingly composed.
Inspired by “Old Pond,” a haiku that Bashō composed in 1680—“Old pond — / Frog jumps in. / Splash!”—Adderson (Izzy in the Doghouse) tells a rollicking tale that wraps up with a homework exercise that’s no slog at all. She isn’t dumbing down Edo period Japanese poetry so much as inviting kids to conceive of and participate in acts of creativity whose roots extend back for literal centuries.
The story of A Pond, a Poet, and Three Pests is simplicity itself. Bashō is out walking one evening and spies “a peaceful place.” As he meditates on a pond’s mossy bank, a carp spots him. Knowing Bashō to be the most famous poet in the land, the carp is exciting to be immortalized in one of the man’s poems. And yet the poet’s eyes remain closed.
A lily flower, which “lives only one season, unless he’s the subject of a poem,” next schemes to be noticed. No dice, however. Soon after, a self-absorbed mosquito smells blood and dreams of fame. She exclaims, “Wow! That’s Bashō!” And like sentient creatures all over the world, she continues with “My life? It could fill a book of poetry.” Bashō? His ears remain “deaf to droning pests.”
An intrepid frog, savvy and hedonistic, watches the scene unfold and decides his midnight swim is crucially important. Poetic immortality can wait. He leaps, strikes the water’s surface, and—“Splash!”— Bashō’s famous haiku is born.
Adderson ends the tale with a helpful page the explains the haiku genre. She follows that with a brief account of Bashō and an irresistible invitation: “Why don’t you try it? Go outside. Lie in the grass, or sit at the base of a tree….” She tasks kids with using their senses in replica of Bashō’s “on-the-spot” haiku writing technique. “Then try to write about it using only three lines, and as few words as possible.”
Even adults who might have grown rusty since their last haiku-writing exercise will find value in Adderson’s exercise—what do you sense about your immediate environment and how do you express it? Now begin!
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Whenever he finishes it, Cull will be Brett Josef Grubisic‘s sixth novel. He assigns, edits, and posts fiction, poetry, and children’s lit reviews for BCR; occasionally, he contributes reviews as well. [He’s recently written about books by Sunny Dhillon, Wanda John-Kehewin, Ryan O’Dowd, Michael V. Smith, David Bouchard, Alice Turski, Louise Sidley, K.J. Denny (ed.), Sonali Zohra, Carrie Anne Vanderhoop, Kristen Pendreigh, Sam Wiebe, Maureen Young, Daniel Anctil, and Adam Welch for BCR.]
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The British Columbia Review
Interim Editors: Trevor Marc Hughes (nonfiction), Brett Josef Grubisic (fiction and poetry)
Publisher: Richard Mackie
Formerly The Ormsby Review, The British Columbia Review is an on-line book review and journal service for BC writers and readers. The Advisory Board now consists of Jean Barman, Wade Davis, Robin Fisher, Barry Gough, Hugh Johnston, Kathy Mezei, Patricia Roy, and Graeme Wynn. Provincial Government Patron (since September 2018): Creative BC. Honorary Patron: Yosef Wosk. Scholarly Patron: SFU Graduate Liberal Studies. The British Columbia Review was founded in 2016 by Richard Mackie and Alan Twigg.
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