A Single Shard By Linda Sue Park

Life is full of constant ethical choices, that is why it's so important to develop reasoning and critical thinking skills at a young age. A Single Shard provides moments of evaluating and making alternate decisions by Tree-ear, a adolescent orphaned boy. What I admire about the book is the way the Linda Sue Park sets up situations and allows Tree-ear to think of the positive and and negative outcomes of his decisions. Sometimes the decision isn't so obvious and he outweighs decisions by ultimately follows his morals and being honest with himself.

Tree-ear begins to save half of his lunch so he can bring dinner to Crane-man. He buries his half eaten bowl in order to retrieve it after a day's work. While Tree-ear could save all the rice for himself, he chooses to share his earnings with his friend, this shows compassion and respect. Soon Tree-ear discovers the bowl has been filled again (pg 41) and
He thought for a moment that if he ate the full meal at lunch, it would probably be refilled (pg47). “How quickly one became greedy!” He thought after making a moral and ethical choice to not take advantage of the kindness of another. When children are faced with temptation and the outcome isn’t negative, the correct decision isn’t always obvious. I believe it was important for Tree-ear to correlate temptation with greed, and to appreciate what we have.

The drive behind helping Min was Tree-ear’s hope of learning how to be a potter. Min dismissed these dreams because Tree-ear was not his son (pg 95). Tree-ear lost his motivation for working because he goal was no longer in reach. He begins to wish that he had not offered to take Min’s vessel to Songdo. He decieds not to do it for Min, but he would complete the journey for Ajima. Tree-ear was hoping all of his hard work would be repaid by learning the trade. Even though he offered to go, he now thought he didn’t owe Min anything. He had the choice to go or