- The Umbrella Queen
Umbrellas are a big deal in this country Thai village, and young Noot, a reliable participant in the annual New Year's Day umbrella parade, dreams someday of being declared the Umbrella Queen. Eager to join the family tradition of making umbrellas, she proves herself gifted at painting decoration on them, but her tastes are unconventional, leaning to playful elephants rather than the traditional flowers and butterflies. Though she dutifully returns to the more marketable themes to support the family business, it's her free-spirited elephant umbrellas that catch the eye of the king when he comes to the village to choose the Umbrella Queen. The text is somewhat lengthy, but the story is quiet yet charming, tactfully respecting both the family's need to produce merchandise that sells and the young girl's creative impulses, and giving her a child-appealing reward indeed. Yoo's illustrations, linoleum prints touched with pencil, have a delicacy and richness unusual in prints, with several layers of color in each spread and the pencilwork adding detail. The result is print-orderly, with the creamy pages and strong emphasis on harvest gold and olive green suggesting craftwork themselves, even as smaller elements add more illustrative personality. Noot's gamboling elephants are entrancing, but they're also credible as design elements for her umbrellas. The story is well turned in its own right, and it could easily be enhanced with an Internet look of some contemporary examples of the famous Thai sun umbrellas and perhaps even a classroom design project.