Manyebook

The Lost Umbrella of Kim Chu

Nine-year-old Kim Chu lived in New York City's Chinatown, near the rumbling elevated trains and — best of all — near the Chatham Square Library. Each year her father made a beautiful dragon for the New Year's Day Parade and this year his dragon had won the prize — an elegant black umbrella with a little secret compartment in the handle.

One rainy day, Kim Chu borrowed the umbrella without permission to protect the library books she was returning, and while she chose new books it was stolen from the umbrella stand! It must be found. Though she had never traveled alone before, Kim Chu's search led her on an adventurous journey — onto an El train that raced and rattled to South Ferry and then onto a ferry boat to Staten Island. With her best friend, Mae Lee, using their special code, they kept watch on a mysterious stranger and a laughing lady and in the end they solved the mystery of the lost umbrella in a wholly satisfying way.

Winner of the Newbery Award for Ginger Pye, author of the much-loved Moffat books and, more recently, The Coat-Hanger Christmas Tree, Eleanor Estes has drawn from her remembrances of the children who came to the Chatham Square Library in Chinatown, where she once worked, to create this humorous and childlike story, one that warmly evokes the specialness of New York's Chinatown and that is perfectly matched by Jacqueline Ayer's charming pen-and-ink drawings.

  • Format
  • hardcover
  • Pages
  • 85
  • Language
  • english
  • ISBN
  • 9780689501111
  • Settings
  • New York City, New York
  • Genres
  • fiction
  • Release date
  • 1978