Filled with imaginative illustrations, Thread by Thread is a delightful picture book for readers age 4-7 that is based on a single, wonderfully extended metaphor–knitting. It’s also a moving story about a family of refugee mice.

When the story begins, the family lives in a lovely, tidy, red knit house:

“Toasty warm in my home, I watch the world from my window,” says the contented, unnamed narrator.

But soon their toasty home begins to unravel. Racing away one thread at a time, the mice cross tall waves on their knitting-needle boat, encounter a dragon with thread-flames coming out of its mouth, forage for new threads, and rebuild a newly knitted home in their new land, aided by a rhino, a turtle, and other adorably sketched animals. No longer red, their new thread-home is a riot of colors–orange, purple, green, yellow, and blue. The mice rejoice, their replacement house filled with love.

The story operates on a number of levels, with a spare text to suit the youngest picture book readers and a subtext that will engage slightly older ones–and early knitters!–along with adults. While the knitting vocabulary may go over some children’s heads, the context makes the meaning clear and the sweet, gentle images and yarn illustrations render a complicated topic surprisingly understandable for young minds. The book ends with a tiny allusion to persecution for being, acting, or behaving differently: “I’ll knit a life that fits me. A roof where I can be me.” But nothing more nor too heavy, as befits the target reader.

At its surface, Thread by Thread works well as a sweet, gentle tale about mice that travel to escape disaster. But it can also serve as a jumping off point for answering difficult questions about refugees and displacement, questions that can arise in today’s world for even very young readers.

Plus it has mice! And knitting! Honestly, does it get much better?

Thread by Thread
Written by Alice Brière-Haquet
Illustrated by Michela Eccli
Translated from the French by Sarah Ardizzone
ISBN:  9780802856395
February 18, 2025, Eerdmans Books for Young Readers

Reviews: Kirkus

Read an interview with the author and illustrator.

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 120 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).