A beautiful story about the power of story.  The story is prefaced with a folktale told to the main character by is mother, and the body of the story tells of a young boy’s imagination being captures by this familiar folktale.  On an outing with his father, when young Jiro is left to explore a neighbor’s garden, he wanders into a tea house where he falls asleep and dreams he’s met the Crane woman from the folktale.  The way the story is told, the line between reality and dream is a blurry one.  The illustrations to an amazing job of capturing both the setting and the mood of the story.