Silk Umbrellas
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1.0 • 1 Rating
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- $5.99
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- $5.99
Publisher Description
Eleven-year-old Noi is learning to paint like her grandmother. She and her older sister, Ting, spend many rapt hours in the jungle watching as Kun Ya paints delicate silk umbrellas to sell at the market. But one day Kun Ma and Kun Pa announce that Ting must start working at a local radio factory to help support the family. As the days and weeks pass, Noi anxiously sees her own fate reflected in her sister’s constricting world. Can Noi find a way to master her fear of failure and stand up for her gift — and Kun Ya’s tradition — before the future masters her?
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Set in northern Thailand, Marsden's (The Gold-Threaded Dress) graceful, compact novel centers on an 11-year-old who delights in helping her grandmother paint jungle-inspired designs on silk umbrellas to sell at market. Noi, accustomed to contributing only minor details to the artwork, trembles when her grandmother instructs her to paint a butterfly on the silk, advising, "Paint with all of you. Become the butterfly." Since the land Noi's father once farmed was sold to a developer, he now, ironically, lays bricks for the houses that will fill his former farmland. The family barely gets by with his part-time income, that from the silk umbrellas, and the mosquito nets Noi's mother stitches. Then Noi's mother signs up Noi's 15-year-old sister, Ting, to work in a factory making radios a tedious, joyless task. Marsden laces her lyrical passages with effective imagery: when Noi's grandmother protests Ting's factory work, their mother says, " 'Without work, we don't have enough.' Her words sounded like coins being counted out one by one." The creative, free-spirited Noi holds out hope that her umbrella painting may be her salvation from a fate like her sister's. The author captures the exotic smells, tastes and sounds that define Noi's world and shapes an equally affecting portrait of a family coping with the changes thrust upon it. Ages 8-12.
