Filled with the sights and sounds of Thailand, this simple and touching tale is true to childhood the world over. One wonderful day, an old peddler arrives in the small village in faraway Thailand where a little girl named Miss Moon lives. He brings a tree with him, fashioned of brightly colored paper flowers. How Miss Moon longs to have such a tree! When the old man gives her one of the flowers in parting, she plants its seed―a black bead―and tends it faithfully. Little black beads can't sprout and grow, of course, but Miss Moon's faith is rewarded all the same! Filled with the sights and sounds of Thailand, this touching tale is true to childhood the world over. In these pages, Ayer's bold color and expressive illustrations draw us into a world that feels both intriguingly foreign and wonderfully familiar. PreS-Gr 3—When a stranger passes through a village in Thailand carrying a bamboo post adorned with bright synthetic flowers, a little girl called Miss Moon is so captivated that she pines for her own "paper-flower tree." The child takes the black bead from the center of her one paper flower, plants it in the earth, and tends to it as though it were a living thing. The villagers warn that she is wasting her time, but Miss Moon maintains her simple and unwavering belief that a paper-flower tree will grow. The stranger returns to the village a year later and is confronted by Miss Moon, who has waited eagerly for her tree. She awakes the next day to find a tree standing just where she planted the black bead. The villagers explain that the stranger has simply given her his own, but Miss Moon has received her heart's desire and happily refuses to believe them. Ayer's bold use of primary colors and the thoughtfully and uniquely crafted faces of the villagers deliver readers directly into Miss Moon's Thai community, while economical pencil strokes guide the eye to the most essential action in each scene and leave the rest to the imagination. As a character, Miss Moon is easily relatable; she is an everychild. Her resolve and stalwart faith will resonate with children, and their caregivers will find Miss Moon's consuming passion for one hard-to-find object familiar. VERDICT This wish-fulfillment tale set in Thailand is a welcome addition to most collections.—Lauren Younger, New York Public Library "...a warm and whimsically illustrated parable about the moral courage of withstanding cynicism and the generative power of the affectionate imagination." --Maria Popova, Brain Pickings "The book captures, in a way that is completely devoid of any sentimentality, the persistent, stubborn hope of young children. ...Ayer brings Thailand to vivid life, and Enchanted Lion has put great care and consideration, as they always do, into the book's reproduction. You're going to want to hold a copy in hand to feel the cover and pages and take in Ayer's artwork."--Julie Danielson, Kirkus Reviews "Blocks of color, and fine lines alternating with crosshatching and patches of rough pencil, give a mystical feeling to this lovely tale from Southeast Asia."--Meghan Cox Gurdon, The Wall Street Journal On Jacqueline Ayer: "I regress with joy to the delicately drawn world of Jacqueline Ayer's Siam" --Sylvia Plath on A Wish for Little Sister, for The New Statesman (1961) "Jackie grew up believing that she could accomplish anything. She was graceful, charming, smart, drew beautifully and had an innate sense of style and fashion. ... What is always difficult to understand is the degree to which she changed every culture she was embedded in, from editorial pages to clothing design to fabrics and children's books. Her parents, the neighborhood, her schooling and the remarkable century we shared all contributed to her extraordinary life." --Milton Glaser The daughter of Edward and Thelma Brandford, Jacqueline grew up in the Bronx at the ‘Coops’, a co-operative built for garment workers. She went to Music and Art High School, followed by Syracuse University. She continued her studies in Paris which led to work as an assistant fashion illustrator. From there she was introduced to Christian Dior and the Vogue Editor M. de Brunhoff, which lead to work as a fashion illustrator for Vogue and Bonwit Teller in New York. Her marriage to Fred Ayer led to a move to Thailand, where she wrote and illustrated children’s books and started the fashion company Design Thai, supported by the Rockefeller Foundation. In later life she worked in India for craft and textile development under Indira Gandhi and in New York and London, designing home furnishings for companies including Bloomingdales and Conran.