Book Review: The Empress and the Silkworm by Lily Toy Hong.

This is a book that spills the beans on a process that was a fiercely guarded secret for 3,000 years: where silk comes from.

Young Chinese empress Si Ling-Chi is enjoying a hot cup of tea in her imperial garden while sitting under the imperial mulberry bushes, and a little coccoon falls in her cup. Being one privileged lady, she gets dozens of serving maids, just for kicks, to help unravel the thing. They spend hours unwinding a really long, fine fiber out of the cocoon, decide to make thread out of it, and change the world.

I like this story and I like the way it's told. Daughter wasn't so keen on it, though. She just wanted more reading about Zoe's Hats and bell hooks' Homemade Love instead of more of that Chinese stuff, you know? Once was enough for her. (For now, at least.)

For me, though - I read The Empress and the Silkworm a couple of times. As usual, I was more into the story-behind-the-story on the last page, which reveals just how valuable this children's book could have been in the 1500s, when everyone wanted to know how that fabulous fabric was made (and a pair of plucky monks smuggled the wiggly little secret out of China hidden in a pair of bamboo tubes). If you don't know that story, it's a great bit of history, and it's simple enough for even a little kid to grasp. The kind of cartoony/iconic drawing style is pleasant enough, too.

I have a feeling this could be a bigger hit with Daughter if she was at the point where she could read it to me. As it is, though, it's a pretty good history lesson and, if you're into these kinds of things, a pretty good, "Hey! Chinese things are cool!" thing. Lily Toy Hong seems to specialize in books-with-lessons-about-China, so I'm sure we'll run into her again. And maybe this one'll come home from the library again in a couple of months and get read to me.


It's available at the Adoptionshop, here.