Sweet but not saccharine, heartwarming but not maudlin, Two Little Red Mittens is a charming, old-fashioned story. A picture book for children ages seven and under, the gentle tale features an anthropomorphic pair of red mittens:

        Left and right, they always went out as a pair, wrapping Little One’s hands in their
        fluffy warmth… Every night, drying out by the woodstove, the two mittens promised each other:
        Let’s keep those tiny fingers toasty warm tomorrow, and the next day, and the next.

Socks and mittens have an unfortunate tendency to get separated. The two little mittens of the story are no different, for one day the child loses her right red mitten. The story follows its travels–a fox finds it, then a mother rabbit. It becomes a tea cozy, a nightcap for her baby rabbits, a soft comforter for their young mice friends and, after a pigeon spies it, a “pillowy” sweater for a squirrel, who, “caressed the right mitten with its cheek.” It winds up “stretched, torn, unraveling, and a totally different shape…” and much loved at every stage of its journey.

In the meantime, the child’s mother has knit her a new right mitten. The left mitten works with the new one, but it thinks about the old one with tangible longing:

      With each touch of the pure-white snow, the left mitten thought of the old right mitten.
      I wonder if everything’s all right.
      They had made tiny snowballs together. That mitten had helped pull the sled for Little One
      and pick up the red berries that fell in the snow.

The story seems simple, but like all good picture books, Two Little Red Mittens is imbued with multiple levels of meaning and depth. And while you probably think you know where this poetic tale is headed, its ending may still come as a surprise. Read it on a quiet evening with cup of tea–or with a young child beside you–and find out.

Two Little Red Mittens
Written by Kirin Hayashi
Illustrated by Chiaki Okada
Translated from the Japanese by Avery Fischer Udagawa
ISBN: 978-1662516764
OCTOBER 1, 2024, Amazon Crossing Kids

Reviews: Publishers Weekly

You can buy a copy here* or find it at a library.

*Book purchases made via our affiliate link may earn GLLI a small commission at no cost to you. Advance reader copy provided by publisher.

Award-winning opera singer Nanette McGuinness is the translator of over 100 books and graphic novels for children and adults from French, Italian, German and Spanish into English, including the much-loved Geronimo Stilton Graphic Novels, as well as Tiki: A Very Ruff Year (nominated for the 2023 Eisner and Harvey Awards) and Alice on the Run: One Child’s Journey Through the Rwandan Civil War (2023 GLLI YA Translated Book Prize Honor Book, 2023 Mosaic Prize winner, 2023 Excellence in Graphic Literature Finalist and 2023 Harvey Award nominee). Accolades have also gone to her translations of Magical History Tour: Vikings and of Magical History Tour: Gandhi (both 2023 Excellence in Graphic Literature Finalists), Luisa: Now and Then (2019 Stonewall Honor Book; 2020 GLLI YA Translated Honor Book; YALSA’s Great Graphic Novels for Teens in 2019) and California Dreamin’: Cass Elliot Before the Mamas & the Papas (2018 Harvey Award; YALSA’s Great Graphic Novels for Teens in 2018).