A story told through words, Shibumi and the Kitemaker can only be fully imagined through Mercer Mayer's incomparable illustrations. The fact that it was generated entirely through computer graphics makes it all the more remarkable! "The funny thing for me as an artist is that it never existed outside of my computer until it was printed."Shibumi and the Kitemaker is a result of the author's lifelong fascination with Japanese culture, beginning at the age of thirteen, when he moved with his family from Arkansas to Hawaii. There Japanese culture blended into island life, and the young Mayer became immersed in it. Watching his artist-mother create beautiful floral collages out of Japanese rice paper. Idolizing Toshiro Mifune in the samurai movies of Akira Kurosawa. As Mayer explains, "Japanese culture holds romance and mystery for me. I respond to its art and history." Shibumi and the Kitemaker is set in feudal Japan in the kingdom of an emperor who neglects his people. Shibumi, the emperor's beloved daughter, is dismayed by the misery she sees beyond the palace walls. She instructs the royal kitemaker to make her an enormous kite on which she vows to soar "until the city below her is as beautiful as the palace, or the palace is as squalid as the city." Unforeseen circumstances and a strong wind take Shibumi and her ingenious kitemaker far, far away. Eventually, a young samurai funds Shibumi, now fully grown, and brings her back to carry on the struggle her father had begun on her behalf.