THE INVISIBLE SEAM

Modeling his text on a childhood incident involving his wife's Japanese great-grandmother, debut children's author Frew brings a folktale-like simplicity to a story about conflict and truth-telling. Michi, an orphan in pre-modern Japan, arrives as an apprentice at the house of elderly Mistress Shinyo, a seamstress whose hands have grown too stiff and crooked to sew the kimonos for which she earned fame. Michi immediately shows a talent for tiny, even stitching, and the other three apprentices grow wild with jealousy. Behaving with saintly patience, Michi refuses to expose the girls when they steal her supplies and leave her with nothing but red thread to sew up a white silk kimono. Unexpectedly, the customer is delighted: "How clever, Mistress Shinyo. Inside, the red thread challenges me to find a flaw in the stitching. Outside, even the seams are invisible." Still, Michi will not expose her tormentors. "I am deeply ashamed," is all she says to Mistress Shinyo. "I have treated my teacher badly. She should punish me." The apprentices finally confess, but not before readers learn a lesson about the victory of hard work over revenge. First-time illustrator Matsuoka's watercolors linger over the wood and screens of the traditional Japanese house, to some extent offsetting the inconsistent depictions of the characters from page to page. Her best work comes with night scenes, when faces are illuminated by lantern-light, and the shadows are sharp and dark—visual echoes of the good and evil deeds in the story. Ages 6-10. (May)