A silk yarn

Red Butterfly, a medieval Chinese princess, spins a yarn as light and soft as silk, naturally. Told in first-person, her story is a prose-poem, part ode and part lament. Red Butterfly enjoys many beautiful splendors of her father's kingdom, but she must also bear a burden peculiar to her station, namely an arranged marriage to a Khotanese king. In her long farewell, she lists the many splendors and repeatedly bids goodbye to things, places, people, and ultimately to her self as she knows it. To assuage her anticipated homesickness, she smuggles silkworms in her copious silken sleeves. The worms, ostensibly, will multiply and produce one luxury from home, a kind of living memory for her future Khotanese highness. With images that keep the eye spinning and twirling about, the book is chinoisserie for kids, girls especially. Red Butterfly's world is a frothy fantasy of a faraway land where princesses are beautiful and dutiful. The nostalgic tone banishes concerns for the nitty-gritty implications of patriarchy and details of history (Deborah Noyes' note partially makes up for the deficit, but there are some errors here, too). Still, children and parents may also see the story as a successful example of self-soothing.

Red Butterfly: How a Princess Smuggled the Secret of Silk Out of China
Deborah Noyes (author) and Sophie Blackall (illustrator)
Candlewick, 2007