A beau­ti­ful­ly illus­trat­ed tale of tra­di­tion­al crafts and com­mu­nal power.

Rachelle is a young girl liv­ing in Fès, Moroc­co in 1920. Sur­round­ed by a warm com­mu­ni­ty of friends, fam­i­ly, and crafts­peo­ple – both Jew­ish and Mus­lim – Rachelle spends her days play­ing with oth­er young girls in her neigh­bor­hood, try­ing on her grand­moth­er’s amulets, play­ing jokes on a nosy pho­tog­ra­ph­er, and watch­ing her par­ents as they spin del­i­cate threads made of gold at their jew­el­ry work­shop each day. Life in Rachelle’s neigh­bor­hood, the mel­lah, is busy, nour­ish­ing, and filled with mag­ic. But rumors of a machine (or is it a mon­ster?) com­ing from across the sea threat­en to change the mel­lah and the lives of its crafts­peo­ple for­ev­er. Band­ing togeth­er with her grand­moth­er, her par­ents, and the oth­er jew­el­ry mak­ers, Rachelle and four of her friends work togeth­er to put a stop to the machine’s arrival – but only time will tell if they can save the vibrant world of the mel­lah and its beau­ti­ful gold­en threads for good.

Gold­en Threads draws on a series of inspir­ing his­tor­i­cal episodes in Fès, when Jew­ish and Mus­lim arti­sans orga­nized togeth­er against the intro­duc­tion of a new machine that threat­ened to replace their man­u­al labor and com­pro­mise their cher­ished way of life. A book for both mid­dle grade read­ers and for adults read­ing aloud to younger chil­dren, Gold­en Threads will take peo­ple of all ages on a jour­ney into the mul­ti-faith world of Moroc­co’s crafts­peo­ple, inspir­ing gen­er­a­tive con­ver­sa­tions about art, labor, com­mu­ni­ty, and tech­nol­o­gy for years to come.