The Red Thread: An Adoption Fairy Tale is a heartwarming fairy tale about a king and queen who wake up one morning with a strange pain in their hearts. They try every manner of remedy, but still the ache remains. Then one day a traveling peddler shows them his magic glasses. The glasses reveal that the king and queen have an entwined red thread leading from their hearts.
The peddler tells them that they must follow the thread and find out who or what is pulling it if they want to make the aching stop. They follow the thread uphill and downhill, through good weather and bad, across the wide ocean, until finally they come to a small Chinese village. In that village they discover there is a little baby girl holding on the other end of their threads, and the baby has been tugging at the thread all along. They bring the child home to their kingdom and raise her as their own.
Perhaps one of the cutest things about this book is that it is actually a story inside a story. The opening page has two Caucasian parents sitting in a living room with their little girl who appears to be of Asian descent. She asks them to read her the story about the king and queen, and the king and queen in the story closely resemble the parents. This is a great book for anyone who has adopted children, or who wants to discuss different family structures with children in a classroom. It is so original, and yet so straight forward. It addresses the idea of adoption in a way that reaffirms the natural and loving bonds that form between the parents and their children. It would also be a good addition to any study of fairytales.
The illustrations are extremely colorful and Grace Lin uses a spiral pattern to enhance the background of the sky. The looks of sorrow and emptiness on the faces of the king and queen are heart wrenching. This story is a new kind of fairy tale, because it addresses a topic that can't be found in older stories, but it does it in a way that stays true to the genre. The book is dedicated to "all children adopted, the parents who loved them but could not keep them, and the parents who traveled far to find them."
I have often thought about how to address adoption in the classroom, or even with relatives and friends who have adopted children. This book seems like a wonderful resource and a beautiful story. The idea of the red thread pulling the adoptive parents to the child - so powerful! And shows how the adopted child is so wanted. I wish I had this book while working in an orphanage this past year. I will have to pass the title along. Thank you for introducing this book to me!
ReplyDeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteWhat a great story!!! I have a few friends who had adopted children from other countries and I always love listening to their stories of the whole process. This would be a great book to introdcue blended families or to have the children do a project about their own families and cultures. Does the book talk about the adoption process from the perspective of the little girl at all? It sounds like this story has a great message and would be appropriate for children of all ages.
ReplyDeleteI love hearing about fairy tales that coming from different cultures. I'm going to try to use this book in my class, along with other multicultural fairy tales in order to reinforce a respect for diversity in the classroom. I think this is a great story and can teach plenty of morals.
ReplyDelete