The Paper Bridge

How should we get communities to solve problems together? This is the question at the heart of the story of Anya, when sudden changes in the wind threaten the paper village where she lives. Anya is one of the tiny paper people (it takes four children to carry the scissors) who live in the village of Paperlee, and to solve the weather problem she needs a bridge to reach across to the neighbouring village of Forestlee, where the villagers are creating new winds. Using kirigami, the Japanese craft of cutting and folding paper, she crosses the chasm that divides the two villages, and solves the problem by persuading the Forestlee inhabitants to cooperate and change the position of their windmills.

The artwork is completely entrancing, depicting the Paperlee villagers in traditional Japanese dress and drawn in a beautiful pale blue, and their Forestlee neighbours in warmer earthier browns, reds and blues in more European styles of clothing. There is a lot for an older reader to ponder here, as we follow Anya in her friendship building and solution finding, and a younger reader might see the narrative as one of simple cooperation.

The ecological message, that by nations/peoples working together we can create solutions to our problems, is plainly told.   Anya becomes friends with Hazel in Forestlee, and the elephants who create the wind for the windmills devise a way for the windmills to blow without inconveniencing the people of Paperlee. All really charming – but perhaps the allegory is too simple: in creating this world, with windy elephants and people so fragile and lightweight they carry stones to weigh them down, the story might be seen to have too much detail that could distract the reader. The charm of the artwork, the warmth in the sharing of cultures (exemplified by the sharing of cookie-making and kirigami: so much art and food tech could emerge from this book!) nevertheless will stay with the reader or class throughout re-reads or a class project.