The Mitten String by Jennifer Rosner (review)

The family of young Ruthie Tober produces their small village’s wool supply, and Ruthie particularly enjoys dyeing the wool bright colors and using the resulting yarn to knit mittens for the area’s children. When Ruthie’s family encounters a deaf woman with a baby in need of help, they offer her and her child shelter for the night. Bayla, the woman, has a bright blue strand of yarn wrapped around her wrist, which intrigues Ruthie, as does the woman’s use of hand signs to communicate with her child. In the night, Ruthie discovers what the blue yarn is for: Bayla attaches one end to her baby’s wrist and the other end to her own, so that she will be alerted if the baby wakes. Ruthie is inspired by this invention to knit a baby mitten attached by a string to a larger mitten for the pair to wear on cold winter nights, and she also adds a string between each mitten pair that she has knitted for the village’s children, so that the mittens can be threaded through a coat and kept from being lost. An author’s note explains that the story was inspired by Rosner’s deaf great-great aunt, who lived in a village in Austria in the 1800s and used a similar technique for “listening” to her baby at night. The tale itself is sweet but not saccharine, and the gentle tone of the storytelling is well matched by the softly textured illustrations and muted palette. Creative and compassionate kids will appreciate the innovative problem-solving that both Ruthie and Bayla demonstrate, and some may be inspired by the brief sign language glossary in the back to learn more about signing.