The Plot: Red Butterfly (2015) by A. L. Sonnichsen is a three part verse novel that tells the story of Kara, a preteen Chinese girl growing up in Tianjin. Kara was abandoned as an infant because of a hand deformity and taken in by an older American woman living in China. As Kara grows up, she comes to understand that her foster mother has been living illegally in China with an expired visa and that she has never officially adopted Kara, so she does not have paperwork to prove her identity. All of these issues come to a head when her mother's 40-year-old daughter Jody comes to visit, collapses, and the police are notified. Kara is sent to an orphanage where she meets and befriends Toby, a physical therapist, who helps care for children with diseases and deformities. Eventually Kara is faced with the difficulty of wanting to be with her foster mother and the possibility of being adopted by a family from Florida. While it seemed like the narrative was dangerously close to relying on the "white savior" trope, Sonnichsen does explain that she takes her own experiences living in China and volunteering at an orphanage as inspiration for the events of her verse novel. Sonnichsen reveals in her author's note that she grew up in Hong Kong, spent eight years as an adult living in Tianjin, China, and eventually adopted her daughter from a Chinese orphanage.The Poetry: Sonnichsen's nearly 400-page verse novel utilizes lyrical free verse to tell Kara's story. Like some other verse novels for young readers, Sonnichsen project does not adhere to the traditional poetic practice of beginning each new poem on its own page; it appears that she does this to save space, but this practice also forefronts the novelistic aspect of the work. Many of the early poems in the collection employ imagery, sound, and repetition to great effect, but as the collection continues, these poetic techniques are discarded in favor of a focus on plot. The title poem, "Red Butterfly," an early poem in the collection, employs impactful poetic techniques such as imagery, space, and consonance:
I ride with my hair
whipping back,
a long,
flapping
black flag.
..........
The city
is a blur.
No one stares,
..........
when I am alone,
pedaling my ruby-red bicycle.
No one knows I am different,
..........
flitting between them,
a red butterfly. (7-8)
Overall, I give Red Butterfly three stars. It was a fine verse novel; the narrative was engaging, the illustrations were captivating, and the poetry in the early parts of the collection was well-done.
