Red Thread Sisters (review)

It's the dream of the girls at China's Tong Du orphanage to find real families, but Wen can't bear the thought of being parted from her best friend and spiritual older sister, Shu Ling. When eleven-year-old Wen is adopted by an American family, she promises Shu Ling that she'll make sure her friend gets adopted as well. Wen gradually settles in with the McGuires, but she's devastated to realize she may not be able to honor her promise to Shu Ling, who will soon age out of adoptability according to Chinese policy. The foregrounding of Wen's friendships, including her growing closeness with an American classmate, adds a new dimension to the familiar adoption story. Without belaboring the point, Peacock (herself an adoptive parent of Chinese-born kids) makes clear how much of an unfair gamble the adoption process can be; what helps Shu Ling most is Wen writing a compelling description for her on a website and advocating for her in the blogosphere. Overall, it's a fairly gentle treatment of a tough subject, and the prose, though occasionally stodgy, has an old-fashioned, accessible simplicity of style. Even preteens who can't grasp the magnitude of an international uprooting will relate to the pain of separation from one's best friend, and they'll rejoice at Wen and Shu Ling's hard-won reunion.