Laundry Day

In this picture-book-level "graphic novel," a blend of realism and fantasy, clotheslines zigzag across the space between rows of tenement buildings, and a shoeshine boy is surprised when a piece of red silk falls from the sky. He wants to return it to its owner, a quest that takes him up and down fire escapes, back and forth across the clotheslines, and into the company of the colorfully diverse people who live in the apartments: Chinese, Italian, Irish, a rabbi, a prospector, a dressmaker. . . Each sends him on his way, with a moon cake or a cookie, in search of the real owner, and at the end he is happily (magically?) rewarded for his determined integrity. Lively pages laid out in multiple panels, with a few words of text in dialogue balloons, capture the exhilarating action. There is a cheerful side to a neighborhood packed with people of different origins--the opportunity to make friends across race lines, culture lines, and clotheslines!