The Long Silk Strand: A Grandmother's Legacy to Her Granddaughter

This graceful story, the author's first, has the weight of a time-honored folktale. Each evening, Yasuyo's grandmother ties together silk threads and adds them to an ever-growing ball. For each thread, she tells her granddaughter a story from her life (""This thread is for the time I visited my grandmother above the clouds""). When Grandmother dies in her sleep, a tearful Yasuyo sees a strand of silk thread descending from the sky. Climbing it up to the clouds, she joins her grandmother. But after spying her parents and brother down below, Yasuyo realizes that she will miss them-and they her. Grandmother promises, ""You will be with me always. All of my memories of you are tied into this."" She snaps off a piece of thread and gives it to Yasuyo, who makes her way down the strand and imagines the day when she, too, will roll a ball and tell her own granddaughter that ""this thread is for the time I visited my grandmother above the clouds."" Featuring a distinctive palette of cool, muted colors, Bochak's (Paper Boats) elegant, understated cut-paper art evokes the tale's Japanese setting while underscoring the considerable emotional impact of Williams's tender story. Ages 4-up. (Aug.)