Ages 5-9. Set in a refugee camp in Thailand, this picture book about a small Hmong child quietly tells a story of terror. As they wait in the camp, Grandmother teaches Mai to stitch traditional pa'ndau story cloths. First Mai sews only the borders, but then she stitches her own story, filling the cloth with pictures that show the murder of her parents and her escape under fire in a basket on Grandmother's back. Soft-toned watercolor and gouache illustrations set the story in the present; then reproductions of the real stitched story cloths by Hmong refugee You Yang show the child's war experiences. The stitched pictures in folk-art style distance the brutality, both showing and telling that art can be a powerful force. The final pa'ndau of Mai flying with her grandmother in an airplane to a land of comfort and safety is a moving representation of the dreams of refugees everywhere.
Stitched by You Yang. In a moving story, a young Hmong girl in a Thai refugee camp is taught by her grandmother how to stitch border designs for pa'ndau story cloths. Mai listens as the other women tell the stories of their lives; then she watches as the women stitch them. One day she decides to sew her own painful story. The text is illustrated with watercolors and beautiful reproductions of Mai's pa'ndau stitching. A map and foreword precede the story. Glos.
A Hmong refugee girl remembers painful episodes from her life in a pa'ndau, a traditional story cloth. Close-up photos of Yang's textured needlework "add to the [tale's] poignancy," said PW. Ages 3-8. (Sept.)