5 March 2015 RED BUTTERFLY by A.L. Sonnichsen, Simon & Schuster, February 2015, 400p., ISBN: 978-1-4814-1109-7

“I don’t know where I am.

I don’t want to stand in the

doorway of this room

and let everyone stare at me.

Where do I go?

I whisper to Miss Li.

There are kids everywhere,

but they all seem to have problems--

they sit in wheelchairs

or lie on the floor mats,

their bodies twisted.

The room is filled

with the sound of funny breathing

and the faint murmur

of tinkling music

from a small CD player

plugged into the wall.

There are whispers, too,

always whispers

from the kids who sit

around the table.

One girl taps her pencil

in time to the music

while she watches me.

This is your room,

Miss Li says.

You sleep here

and study here

and go to the cafeteria

for meals.

I don’t see any beds,

only brightly colored floor mats.

Everyone watches

and I begin to wonder

if they’re waiting for me to cry.”

Kara was born with a misshapen hand and abandoned by her biological mother at birth. Undoubtedly this abandonment was a result of the strict family planning laws in China that limit most urban families to one child and most rural families to two children. China is not a great place to be born a disabled girl.

Infant Kara was taken in by an elderly American woman who was visiting China with her husband. The woman chose to stay behind in the city of Tianjin with Kara, raising the child in a rented apartment, while her husband returned alone to Montana.

Now more than a decade has passed. Kara has never attended school. Educated by her de-facto American mother, English is the only language she speaks fluently. She goes out riding her red bike and doing errands while Mom, whose visa ran out a long time ago, hides in their apartment.

Kara’s American mom has a grown daughter named Jody. During a visit to see her mother in Tianjin, Jody experiences a medical crisis and in the resulting chaos Mom’s house of cards comes tumbling down. Mom’s deported to America and Kara is sent to a charitable institution for children with disabilities and listed for adoption.

One thing I especially like about RED BUTTERFLY is the way that the author brings to life the individual kids Kara meets in the institution. No doubt the Schneider Family Award committee will be interested in this one.

The China family planning laws that relate to this story make for an interesting background. Over the past half century, the world’s total population has surged from three-plus billion people to seven-plus billion. There is clearly a limit to the human population that can be supported by Mother Earth. Given the current state of the planet, with widespread environmental degradation, a race to exploit non-renewable resources, and the disappearance or near-extinction of so many species, population control is an important issue for debate. RED BUTTERFLY shows an ugly side of the way that China’s population laws lead to problems and ethical issues.

But what makes RED BUTTERFLY special is the way that author A.L. Sonnichsen portrays the spirited tween Kara. Physically hampered by her malformed hand, abandoned by her birth mother, raised in a bizarre fashion by her de facto mother, and institutionalized, Kara has never stopped dreaming. Where will she find her true home?

Richie Partington, MLIS

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