When she was a child, Ting-xing Ye tells us, any time she and her brothers tried to get out of household chores, her mother would scold, “Three monks, no water!” The expression was an old one, but no one knew quite where it came from. Many years later, Ye, now a writer living in Orillia, Ontario, has made up a story to fit.

A young monk lives a life of quiet contemplation in a temple on a mountain-top, looking after his few simple needs and carrying his own water from a spring. When another monk joins him, they work together so ineffectually that two carry less water than one. A third moves in and soon there is no water at all. Only when disaster strikes do the three learn the value of work and co-operation – the hard way.

The tale offers plenty of opportunity for thinking and talking about another culture – Why a temple? What does it mean to be a monk? Within the frame of her story, Ye also raises themes of responsibility, sharing, and forthrightness. At times her text is wordy; it takes almost 100 words to say that a mouse set fire to the temple, and the explanation of why two monks can’t get a bucket of water up the mountain is confusing and laboured. Such occasional snags are balanced out by Harvey Chan’s illustrations, elegant and droll against a buttery saffron background. The book is genuinely beautiful, a delight to open – for adults especially. I’m not sure that this is truly a book for children, that these three silly men, one young, one skinny, one fat, will successfully engage young readers. The easiest point of identification for a child would have been the first monk, yet, though he thinks of himself as “a youngster,” he acts, thinks, and looks every bit as middle-aged as the other two. And can a children’s writer still get away with using “fat” as a comic element in these sensitive days?