Grace Lin's bread and butter

Grace Lin

The Ugly Vegetables

Talewinds, 1999

Chinese food offers for Grace Lin an endless source of book material. Her The Ugly Vegetables recounts in bright pictures and pared down sentences her slow but sure affection for her mother's gardening and cooking skills. At first, when neighbors' flowers bloom, she feels mixed about her family's decidedly un-photogenic plantings. But after the neighbors join the family in a hearty post-harvest meal, she couldn't be prouder. With a guide to Chinese vegetables and soup recipe.

I especially like Fortune Cookie Fortunes, which conveys a quirkier and wittier point of view. As with her other books, this one features her family, each of whom opens a cookie to reveal a revealing fortune. Delightful and delicious.

Grace Lin

Fortune Cookie Fortunes

Alfred A. Knopf, 2004

Daddy's little helper

Louise Vitellaro Tidd (author)
and Dorothy Handelman (photographs)
Let Me Help!
Millbrook, 1999

Photos of a cute Asian girl and her patient father accompany a book about helping. She helps with shelving books, potting plants, and laundry, but overreaches. When grocery shopping, she has learned to slow down and be careful. Following her dad's lead, she has also learned patience and good humor toward others.

Speaking out and fitting in

Peggy Moss (author) and Lea Lyon (illustrator)
Say Something
Tilbury, 2004

  A pair of books by Peggy Moss tackles the perennial and thorny challenges of school socialization. Say Something gives quiet kids a reassuring nudge: practice and then speak out, and you can change the situation for the better. Say "hi" to the kid who sits alone on the bus or at lunch, and say "that's enough" or "grow up" to bullying behaviors.
  In One of Us, Roberta James has just moved to a new school. On her first day she navigates among several cliques based on fashion, play, and food. In the face of the categorizing question, "What are you?" Roberta demonstrates laudable self-possession by answering, "I am a straight-up hair girl who climbs monkey bars and carries a flowered lunchbox with a pita roll-up in it." She finds a home among kids who refuse to be pigeon-holed and embrace difference.

Peggy Moss (author) 

and Penny Weber (illustrator)

One of Us

Tilbury, 2010

X-cultural X-mas

Pauline Chen
Peiling and the Chicken-fried Christmas
Bloomsbury, 2007

'Tis the season for lots of folly. It's a joyful time, sure, but we get a lot of mixed messages about what to want, what to give, how to feel, and so on. Pauline Chen's fifth-grade heroine, Peiling, longs to have Christmas, like everyone else. She convinces her Taiwanese-American family to celebrate the holiday for the first time, and predictably, it doesn't quite live up to her expectations. The theme of Chen's sympathetic story is identity, and readers with a literary bent will appreciate the embedded play, "The Prince and the Pauper," in which Peiling co-stars. Plot and characters are somewhat conventional, even the quirkiness of Peiling's teacher Miss Rosenweig is conventional. I also have an overly keen radar for things my mom would say, think, or want—that's just the baggage that comes with being an ABC—and there were moments when Peiling set it off. Perhaps this was deliberate, as Chen may get her tween audience to think about their parents' point of view, flawed but motivated by their best intentions. Light and warm and comforting...like a cup of instant milk tea.

Holiday book basket

Since starting this blog in early November, I think I've read at least fifty books and reviewed most of them. Thanks to you, I also have a list of about two dozen books waiting in the wings.

I have only just begun my project to review 365 books, and yet, it is really and truly difficult to pick a "top (arbitrary number here)." The situation is so stunningly different from my childhood. What a delightful difficulty!

These holiday book basket recommendations are intended to provide a variety, a little something for everyone for ages 0-10 or so, plus parents, aunties and uncles, grandparents, godparents, and friends. Overall, I'm aiming at enhancing library and personal library collections. You may have some of these already and want to supplement, or you may pick and choose according to your needs and desires. Also, please write in with your favorites.

Meanwhile, a happy thanksgiving to all.

Hyewon Yum, Last Night
  for ages 0-7, subtle pictures tell the story of stubbornness, imagination, and return to love

Minfong Ho and Holly Meade, Peek! A Thai Hide-and-Seek
  for ages 2-5, luscious pictures and animal sounds accompany peek-a-boo

Carol Crane and Zong-Zhou Wang, D Is for Dancing Dragon
  for ages 5-10, alphabetic journey through things Chinese

Taro Yashima, Umbrella
  for ages 4-8, a present for anticipating the future and remembering the past

Ed Young, Lon Po Po: A Red-Riding Hood Story from China
  for ages 5-10, ingenuity and resourceful triumph

Peggy Goldstein, Lóng is a Dragon: Chinese Writing for Children
  for ages 7-12, learn to write Chinese in a fun and engaging way

Margaret Mahy and Jean & Mou-sien Tseng, Seven Chinese Brothers
  for ages 5-10, brotherly compassion and superhuman qualities conquer imperial cruelty

Meomi, The Octonauts & the Only Lonely Monster
  for ages 4-10, motley crew go on an adventure and make a new friend

Grace Lin, Ling & Ting: Not Exactly the Same!
  for ages 5-9, everyday fun with Chinese-American twins

Lenore Look, Ruby Lu, Empress of Everything
  for ages 7-11, hilarious antics of Ruby and her cousin teach useful lessons in life in second grade and beyond

Starting tomorrow, I'll return to regular reviews. Happy shopping!

Give thanks

Tim Myers (author) and R.G. Roth (illustrator)
Tanuki's Gift: A Japanese Tale
Marshall Cavendish, 2003

A quiet story with watercolor collages lifts us into another world of modest, but nevertheless fully satisfying surroundings. The friendship between a Buddhist priest and a tanuki, or raccoon-dog, blossoms in the bareness of winter. Roth's exuberant images capture a full-body joy that we readers also share. Tim Myers' retelling reminds us of what is really important in life.

Happy Thanksgiving, dear readers, one and all.

China's Leonardo

If you haven't read a book by author Demi, then in your next spare moment, buy, borrow, or beg one. Her books are hands-down gorgeous. Su Dongpo, her illustrated biography of Su Shi (1036-1101) has page after page of splendid illustrations inspired by Chinese woodblock prints. Demi's prose is clear and accessible, and she doesn't try to compete with the poetry of Su Shi himself or Su's mentor Ouyang Xiu or the ageless Dao De Jing. Here, for example, is an excerpt from Su's most famous prose-poem on the Red Cliffs found 3/4 through the book:

Letting the boat go where it pleased,
we drifted over the immeasurable fields of water.
I felt a boundless exhilaration,
as though I were sailing on a void
or riding the wind
and didn't know where to stop.
I was filled with a lightness,
As though I had left the world
and were standing alone, or had sprouted wings
and were flying up to join the immortals!

 For those who wish to know more about this remarkable man, whose talents ranged from hydrological engineering to community service to the arts of poetry, calligraphy, and painting—Demi provides a solid list of sources at the book's beginning. Her use of pinyin Romanization isn't consistent (Renzong and Jentsung are both used for the same emperor, and Su Shih should really be Su Shi). There are other facts of Demi's biography that may also be debated, but my overall impression is  positive. Demi's respect for Su is authentic, and I'm so glad to see an appealing children's book about him.

Demi
Su Dongpo
Lee and Low Books, 2006

Little lost slippers everywhere

Yes, you guessed it: Cinderella. She's everywhere, and contrary to post-Disney American popular assumption, she appears earliest in Chinese literature (see Ai-ling Louie's note). The narrative core remains remarkably consistent from Chinese to Korean to Hmong examples, reviewed here. In all cases, we have a heroine who is as beautiful as she is long suffering. Her jealous step-mother and step-sisters heap abuse after abuse upon her, whether she is called Yeh-shen, Pear Blossom, or Jouanah. Supernatural forces intervene to allow her to attend a festival where a high status man sees her and falls instantly in love. Finally, a mate-less shoe serves as a token to reunite the couple. What make these folk tales interesting, though, are the differences. For example, the supernatural force may take the form of a magic fish, tokgabi goblins, or the hide of a deceased mother-turned-cow. Illustrations are especially important for making the story fresh. I like Ruth Heller's best for their fantastical and decorative qualities. Anne Sibley O'Brien strives for accuracy. The pictures by Ed Young, though beautiful, are a bit too ethereal and miss opportunities for narrative specificity. If you or your children are into Cinderella, exploring these other versions will probably be quite fun.

 

Ai-ling Louie (author) and Ed Young (illustrator)

Yeh-Shen: A Cinderella Story from China

Turtleback, 1996

Shirley Climo (author) and Ruth Heller (illustrator)

The Korean Cinderella

HarperCollins, 1993

Jewell Reinhart Coburn with Tzexa Cherta Lee (authors) and Anne Sibley O'Brien (illustrator)

Jouanah: A Hmong Cinderella

Shen's Books, 1996

Pass the soy sauce, please

Beijing's hungry ghost gourmand has met his match in Ying Chang Compestine's chubby little hero. Chub-chub's stalling tactics keep hungry ghost on the run all through the night, vainly preparing for a mouth-watering feast of boy dumplings. At dawn's light, the ghost wails à la Wicked Witch of the West (I'm melting!) before disappearing like a bad genie into little boy's paper lantern. James Yamasaki's slapstick, campy pictures accompany the eclectic, comedic escapade. Fun for a Halloween state-of-mind.

Ying Chang Compestine (author) and James Yamasaki (illustrator)
Boy Dumplings
Holiday House, 2009

Writing pictures

Two idiomatic phrases in the Chinese culture and in the west, respectively, yoke together images and words. Chinese scholar-painters, hewing to high-minded literary ideals, liked to think of their artistic practice as "writing pictures." Thus, their paintings would be infused with poetic and calligraphic sensibility. In the west, the phrase "a picture paints a thousand words" suggests how a single image can capture and convey in an instant a human saga. Pictures have a way of reaching across cultures and generations. Here are three books that deal, in different ways, with painting and childhood.

What I liked best about Peter's Painting was that Peter's ethnicity (signaled by facial features, hair texture, etc.) was purely incidental. Peter is an everychild, who channels his creativity into paintings of a bird that flies, a snake that slithers, and a fish that swims. Finally, Peter paints a door that opens into—you guessed it—the colorful world that Peter created. The text is simple and repetitive (think Eric Carle's Brown Bear, Brown Bear).  And while the text and illustrations aren't the most memorable, it is refreshing to have a book in which a child with Asian features is treated just like anyone, and everyone else.

Before emigrating to Canada (following the Tiananmen tragedy of 1989), Song Nan Zhang experienced the ups and downs of life under Communism in the People's Republic of China, and eventually attained a professorial post in Beijing. Zhang channels his life, his optimism, and his talent into The Children of China: An Artist's Journey, which is one part autobiography, one part children's coffee-table book, and one part illustrated ethnography.  Each of these parts is compelling in its own way: Zhang's story is inspiring and hopeful, the book is filled with his colorful and sensitive paintings of children, and the children hail from many ethnicities that make up the PRC, including Tibetans, Mongolians, Kazakhs, Uygurs, and Yi. The map at the book's beginning helps us to locate the paintings geographically, and I like how easily the book replaces a mono-ethnic view of China. But because the book doesn't fit easily into any particular genre, presenting it to your children may be a challenge. It might be better consumed as a coffee table book, in a leisurely, non-linear fashion, and certainly it would be great in a classroom setting.

Zheng Zhensun and Alice Low's book about Wang Yani, A Young Painter, discusses the life and work of a talented girl from toddler-hood to early adolescence. The book is filled with photographs of Yani at work and at play, and lots of her paintings. The ones of mischievous monkeys are absolutely delightful. The book is substantial non-fiction (80 pages, including appendix, glossary, map, and index), and is thus especially rewarding for art enthusiasts. But, the many colorful paintings would be wonderful inspiration
to wider audiences old and young.

Sally Moss (author) Meredith Thomas (illustrator)

Peter's Painting

Mondo, 1995

Song Nan Zhang

The Children of China: An Artist's Journey

Tundra Books, 1995

Zheng Zhensun and Alice Low (authors)
A Young Painter: The Life and Paintings of Wang Yani—China's Extraordinary Young Artist
Scholastic, 1991

Mickey would be jealous

We have all had that uncanny experience where we feel followed by a portrait's eyes or we sense a sculpture is moving inexplicably. The little mouse, Chopsticks, resident of a Hong Kong harbor restaurant 海上金龍酒家, actually helps to bring a coiled dragon sculpture to life! Old Fu, the sculptor, provides Chopsticks with a magical wooden whistle that will let the dragon take flight when the moon is full. In return, Chopsticks gets free rides—that's got to be the best way to get around Hong Kong. Berkeley's brightly painted illustration are accurate in their rendering of characters and Hong Kong, but also have a touch of lively caricature.

Jon Berkeley
Chopsticks
Random House, 2005

D is for Double

In 2006, two alphabet books sharing the theme of Chinese culture were respectively titled, D Is for Dragon Dance and D Is for Dancing Dragon: A Chinese Alphabet. Coincidence? Despite the near duplication of titles and some of the entries (A is for acrobats and Z is for Zodiac, among them) the two books have different content.

Carol Crane's D Is for Dancing Dragon resides in the non-fiction section. For each entry, she gives a short rhyme describing the selection. Thus, "C is for Chopsticks/an ancient eating skill./Bamboo sticks called 'quick little fellows.'/How do you eat and not spill?" Beside the rhyme, a sidebar provides substantial commentary on sites, people, animals, events, ideas, and things. Her alphabet ranges widely and is remarkably inclusive, as it includes the Himalayas, Mongolians, the Silk Road, alongside the more common Great Wall. Other entries don't seem particularly Chinese (transportation and umbrellas, for example) but those, too, may be seen as a positive feature, defending against exoticizing China as the Other. Illustrations by Zong-Zhou Wang are colorful, but not especially memorable, as they serve a more documentary function.

By contrast, Ying Chang Compestine's D Is for Dragon Dance resides with other picture books in the fiction area. The book also has a more narrow scope, focusing specifically on things that may be linked to the Chinese New Year holiday. Compestine's text is pared down, and Yongsheng Xuan's illustrations more imaginative and more unified in palette and style. We know less about China at the end of this ABC, but we feel more immersed in a single, significant Chinese event.


Carol Crane (author) and Zong-Zhou Wang (illustrator)
D Is for Dancing Dragon: A Chinese Alphabet
Thomas Gale, 2006

Ying Chang Compestine (author) and Yongsheng Xuan (illustrator)
D Is for Dragon Dance
Holiday House, 2006

Sibling rivalry resolved

Laurence Yep's Auntie Tiger is another retelling of the "Granny Wolf" folktale. (Here's a version by Ed Young.) This time, a tiger substitutes, but the heftier change is a focus on two sisters and their sibling rivalry. Bossy the Elder doesn't want responsibility for Lazy the Younger who doesn't like to listen. A visit from Auntie Tiger serves up just desserts for the both of them, and a second chance brings mother's much desired harmony to the household. If you're at your wits' end with your kids, give the book a try. It can't hurt, though I found the story and illustrations rather heavy-handed.

Laurence Yep (author) and Insu Lee (illustrator)
Auntie Tiger
HarperCollins, 2009

School daze

Trish Marx and Ellen B. Senisi's book does cultural comparison brilliantly. Flip the book over, and on the opposite cover, you'll see a like group of lively Chinese kindergartners. Each half of the book takes us from morning welcome at 9 am, through lessons, lunchtime, and recess, to learning how to get along and wondering about the kids on the other side of our planet. The text and pictures make clear that while we might be different superficially, we share common human traits: love of learning, joy in physical activities, and desire for respect and friendship. The Chinese half provides a handful of vocabulary words in context, such as laoshi 老師 (teacher).

Trish Marx and Ellen B. Senisi
Kindergarten Day USA and China: A Flip-Me-Over Book
Charlesbridge, 2010

Years pass swiftly

The story of Momo's birthday gift, an umbrella, is told as a flashback from the gentle and wistful point of view of a parent. Of all her modest gifts, Momo is most enchanted by an umbrella, which she yearns to use. Sunny day after windy day, she tries to persuade her mother to let her use it. Finally, a rainy day comes, and Momo thrills. With her umbrella, she is growing up, conscious of achieving a lady-like posture, but she is also young still, captive to the rhythm and song of raindrops playing on her umbrella. Her parents, too, remember how Momo grew up that day, for she did not need to hold her parents' hands. In Umbrella, Taro Yashima gives us a beautiful essay about how the passage of time—at once swift and slow—is experienced and marked by parents and children. As for the images, think Goodnight Moon with the touch of impressionist Edgar Degas.



Taro Yashima

Umbrella

Viking, 1958

Change and difference

Sometimes we long for change, but change can be hard. The same goes for difference. And if those are already challenging for us, how do we explain to our children? These three authors treat their child protagonists with compassion, and as each realizes how to accept themselves and others, they give us lessons for becoming better people.

Cooper is coping with his Korean-American identity. It seems to be an impossible situation when his Korean language ability is slim, and yet he is regularly confronted with the loaded question, "What are you?" When the answer, "an American," doesn't satisfy, he must consider whether and to what extent he is Korean. Shame and confusion lead him to act impulsively and wrongly, but in doing so, Peter gets to know the Korean-American grocer who offers Cooper a chance to redeem himself. The bilingual English-Korean edition of Sun Yung Shin's Cooper's Lesson may be especially appealing to multi-generational families.

Kimiko Sakai's Sachiko is young, confused, and a little scared by the effects of Alzheimer's disease on her beloved grandmother. Sachiko remembers and misses the grandmother who was coherent and made her feel safe and loved. Now her grandmother is old, but speaks in a voice that is young, confused, and a little scared. At first, Sachiko reacts with petulance and resentment, leading her grandmother on a ruse. But along the way, she learns that she who is still coherent now has the capacity to make another feel safe and loved. Tomie Arai's illustrations for Sachiko Means Happiness effortlessly capture with equal compassion the complex psychology of the characters.

Our sensitive young narrator of Uncle Peter's Amazing Chinese Wedding is niece Jenny. A good observer, she is our knowledgeable guide to Chinese wedding rituals and their symbolism. While activities may be quite different from a western-style wedding, emotions are the same. Her family feels joy and anticipation, but Jenny also feels fear as she worries about being displaced by Peter's bride, Stella. But savvy and thoughtful Aunt Stella brings Jenny away from fear and back into the family fold. Yumi Heo's child-like images capture the anxiety and wonder of Jenny's point of view.

Cooper's Lesson

Sun Yung Shin (author) and Kim Cogan (illustrator)

Children's Book Press, 2004

Sachiko Means Happiness

Kimiko Sakai

Chidren's Book Press, 1997

Uncle Peter's Amazing Chinese Wedding

Lenore Look (author) and Yumi Heo (illustrator)

Atheneum, 2006

A silk yarn

Red Butterfly, a medieval Chinese princess, spins a yarn as light and soft as silk, naturally. Told in first-person, her story is a prose-poem, part ode and part lament. Red Butterfly enjoys many beautiful splendors of her father's kingdom, but she must also bear a burden peculiar to her station, namely an arranged marriage to a Khotanese king. In her long farewell, she lists the many splendors and repeatedly bids goodbye to things, places, people, and ultimately to her self as she knows it. To assuage her anticipated homesickness, she smuggles silkworms in her copious silken sleeves. The worms, ostensibly, will multiply and produce one luxury from home, a kind of living memory for her future Khotanese highness. With images that keep the eye spinning and twirling about, the book is chinoisserie for kids, girls especially. Red Butterfly's world is a frothy fantasy of a faraway land where princesses are beautiful and dutiful. The nostalgic tone banishes concerns for the nitty-gritty implications of patriarchy and details of history (Deborah Noyes' note partially makes up for the deficit, but there are some errors here, too). Still, children and parents may also see the story as a successful example of self-soothing.

Red Butterfly: How a Princess Smuggled the Secret of Silk Out of China
Deborah Noyes (author) and Sophie Blackall (illustrator)
Candlewick, 2007

Paper Inventions

These days the trend is to go paperless. Still, paper is a marvelous (and need it be said, Chinese) invention, which in turn continues to spark creativity around the world. Here are three books that pay tribute, in different ways, to paper arts.

Stefan Czernecki's Paper Lanterns is concerned with the transmission of cultural knowledge from one generation to the next. Old Chen, the finest paper lantern craftsman in China, has two less than ideal apprentices. Entranced by the beauty and magic of the lanterns, Little Mouse accepts a lower status job cleaning after Master and apprentices. But, in doing so, he carefully observes and learns the craft. When the Lantern Festival arrives, naturally, Little Mouse succeeds Old Chen. Much about the book seems so promising—the allure of a beautiful craft, the rivalry and triumph of the modest—but Paper Lanterns does not burn so brightly. Text and illustrations seem flat and, well, caricatured. Unimportant to the plot, the cartoonish portrait of Mao, at once jubilant and eerie, captures the book's superficial feel.


Marguerite Davol's The Paper Dragon features characters, elements, and vignettes drawn from Chinese history, culture, and literature, but altered and combined in unexpected ways. The story's main character is an artist named Mi Fei. Apart from talent, however, Davol's Mi shares little in common with his rather snobbish and eccentric namesake. Good-natured, courageous, and clever, Mi is popular among his neighbors who seek him to confront the dragon Sui Jen. Like Mi Fei, Sui Jen would be unrecognizable to a typical Chinese reader who connotes dragons with water and benevolence. When Mi pleads with Sui Jen to cease scorching the tea bushes and other destructive actions, Sui Jen responds with three challenges in the form of riddles involving paper. Mi calls upon his artistic background and painterly talent to save his fellow villagers. In this test of wits, we are on Mi's side and share his goodwill by accepting Davol's Asian fusion approach. But she pushes us with the lesson of love, which reads like a sermon to children masquerading as a message from the ostensibly Chinese, and therefore Confucian Mi Fei. If you are willing to go with the intercultural patchwork, however, you will get the added pleasure of Robert Sabuda's illustrations. Each double page-spread extends to form long horizontal compositions of richly colored and finely executed papercuts. They are dramatic and dazzling.

Monica Chang's retelling, Story of the Chinese Zodiac, makes it into this trio because of Arthur Lee's illustrations, which are nothing less that a papery tour-de-force. You could probably retell your own version of the race among animals in which the rat outfoxes the cat with a fib and outpaces his competitors with a lift from the ox and thus claims first place among the twelve finishers. After all, you've rehearsed the tale every February (and the occasional January). But, I promise, you will see the race through new eyes because Lee has taken techniques of origami and kirigami to the next level in designs that are fresh and alive. These paper animals jump off the page and into our world. Some of you may also appreciate the bilingual edition in English and traditional Chinese.

Stefan Czernecki
Paper Lanterns
Charlesbridge, 2001

Marguerite W. Davol (author) and Robert Sabuda (illustrator)
The Paper Dragon
Simon and Schuster, 1997

Monica Chang (author), Arthur Lee (illustrator), and Rick Charette (English translation)
Story of the Chinese Zodiac
Yuan-liou,1994

(this cover is to the English/Spanish edition, but the illustration is the same)

Dreaming outside the box

For a general American audience, I suspect there isn't anything obviously Asian about Ayano Imai's The 108th Sheep. But those of you in the know have a special place in your heart for the number 108, right? In Buddhist practice (and possibly in that of other religions, too), the number has significance, a kind of supreme, utmost quality, which returns us to the beginning that is 1. The 108th sheep is the one that marks the end of Emma's sheep-filled, but sleepless night. And that is when she must dream outside the box. Imai's illustrations are a little Tim Burton, a little Shaun the Sheep, and altogether her own. I don't think any expense has been spared in producing the richly textured, generously sized pages in this sparingly gorgeous book.

Ayano Imai
The 108th Sheep
ME Media, 2006

Another retelling

After Tikki Tikki Tembo, Arlene Mosel and Blair Lent directed their collective talents to Japanese culture in The Funny Little Woman. Readers of my earlier review won't be surprised by the following mixed response. Once again the pictures are engaging and delightful, and once again the story is a combination of wicked humor, appealing silliness, and local color, this time involving the eponymous funny little woman, a lost dumpling, underground Jizo sculptures, and monstrous oni. Still, there is an uneasiness about the claim to "retelling" an indigenous Japanese folk tale. Readers with more familiarity and expertise, what say you about the resourceful if somewhat laughable little woman who escaped the oni and acquired fame and fortune through magic and dumplings, and who exclaimed all the while, "Oh, tee-he-he-he"? By the way, this book won the Caldecott Medal.

Arlene Mosel (author) and Blair Lent (illustrator)
The Funny Little Woman
E.P. Dutton, 1972

Tikki's sticky tempo

Someone read to me when I was seven or eight years old Arlene Mosel's Tikki Tikki Tembo, and that name, slightly modified, stuck in my head ever since. I remembered it as "Ricky Ticky Tembo no-sar rembo chari-bari boochee pip perry pembo (curious readers must seek the book itself for the true name). The silly long name was more fun to say than the better known childhood favorite, super-cali-fragil-istic-exme-ala-do-cious. Well, it was on the one hand a genuine pleasure to read this book again (the name still skips and dances off the tongue) and to see the artful and whimsical illustrations of Blair Lent. On the other hand, I found it a little disturbing to realize the completely fabricated explanation for the brevity of Chinese names (mine is, of course, no exception). Such presumption smacks of cultural chauvinism. It was also upsetting to see the disparity in mother's affection for her first and second sons, and I'll hazard that many readers today would shy away from a narrative involving a little boy drowning in a well. The cover states that the story is "retold" by Mosel, but she provides no further information about a source. Does anyone know of an indigenous predecessor?

Arlene Mosel (author) and Blair Lent (illustrator)
Tikki Tikki Tembo
Henry Holt, 1968

A gift for whom?

I don't want to sound the Scrooge (especially as the holiday season nears), but I didn't particularly like Yong Chen's The Gift. The story involves a common theme for immigrant families, the separation of siblings and attempts to bridge the distance. In this case, the acute loneliness felt by Amy's mother is assuaged by a letter and a gift from her brothers and sister. But, the gift is not for her. It is a pendant necklace carved in the shape of a cavorting dragon for daughter Amy. After receiving the gift, Amy and her mother are all smiles and locked into a blissful embrace. Oddly, of all the characters in the story, Amy (ostensibly, the American) is the only one wearing ethnic dress: a padded red-jacket with a satiny sheen and high collar. I think the subtext here is a concern for the aspirations and fears felt by Amy's mother about her daughter's connection to her Chinese heritage and extended family. The on-coming Chinese holiday is but a trigger for that concern. After all, why should a gift to her daughter so effectively ameliorate her own loneliness? I think this book is more about maternal fantasies and less sensitive to children's dreams. Text and illustrations will likely be soothing for mothers like Amy's.

Yong Chen
A Gift
Boyds Mills Press, 2009

A favorite among friends

The Seven Chinese Brothers (or perhaps a predecessor that I am still trying to locate about five Chinese brothers) appears to have made a positive impression upon both my spouse and a close friend. Is this true for you, too? Margaret Mahy's retelling of this tall-tale casts the first Emperor of Qin (her text uses Ch'in Shih Huang) as the antagonist against seven brothers. The brothers, each of whom possesses a marvelous ability (such as keen eyesight, unbreakable iron bones, or immense tears that could flood an empire), come to the aid of conscripted laborers working to repair the Great Wall of China. Fearing a challenge to his power, the tyrannical emperor attempts to put the brothers, three of whom substitute sequentially for each other, to death. In the end, the brothers united in their affection for one another overcome tyranny. Jean and Mou-sien Tseng's excellent illustrations show a sensitive appreciation for drama, as they capture the brothers' deep emotional concerns as well as their courageous escapades. In addition, the Tsengs' reveal a more than passing knowledge of Chinese painting. The lovely spring landscape refers to Tao Qian's poem, "Peach Blossom Spring," which tells of a fisherman's chance encounter with a utopian village. The enraged Emperor of Qin calls to mind the famous painting of Thirteen Emperors in the Boston Museum of Fine Arts collection. While it's possible to criticize the book for implying that all Chinese men look alike or for omitting altogether  Chinese women, nevertheless the story succeeds in generating wonder and amazement and respect for the exercise of strength in combination with compassion, courage, and cooperation.

Margaret Mahy (author) and Jean and Mou-sien Tseng (illustrators)
The Seven Chinese Brothers
Scholastic, 1990

Lessons in children's books

I just finished Lenore Look's Ruby Lu, Empress of Everything, and Ruby taught me a thing a two. First, I need to refine my categories. Ruby Lu fits more comfortably in the category of "chapter book," which means that Ling and Ting properly belongs to "early reader."  Second, and more importantly, I learned a little bit about, well, everything. Over the course of about a year, third-grader Ruby must adjust to the immigration and integration of her cousin Flying Duck and their family into her household, while also overcoming her fears of school notes and swimming and apologizing (what's the fear of apologizing? losing face, bruising the ego, call it what you will, but there's fear there). Oh, and did I mention that Flying Duck is deaf, so we readers also get to learn about Chinese sign language and American sign language. There are lessons in here, dare I say, for everyone, and Look's light touch makes the learning a delight. Don't forget to read "Ruby's and Flying Duck's Amazing and Awesome Glossaries," too, loaded with PSAT words like aquaphobia, veterinary phenomena like parvovirus, Cantonese veggies like gailan, and the Rapa Nui word for hello to one or more people, Iorana koe and Iorana korua, respectively.

Lenore Look (author) and Anne Wilsdorf (illustrator)
Ruby Lu, Empress of Everything
Atheneum Books, 2006

Fathers play, too

Some of you probably feel that fathers get left out of the children's book world. My husband is an avid reader to our son, and I think he keeps an on-going tally of fathers vs. mothers in fiction. The moms, as you might guess, significantly outnumber the dads. Well, here is a book for nurturing dads. Minfong Ho's Peek! A Thai Hide-and-Seek features a playful father asking noisy domestic and tropical creatures where he can find his plucky little daughter. The familiar childhood game is spiced up, shall we say, as we sound out the Thai conventions for animal sounds ("swip-swip-swip-swip" for the dragonfly, and "hoom praowl, hoom praowl for the elephant). Holly Meade's illustrations, which are a satisfying combination of luminous colors and crisp design, likewise transport us to a world where everything seems fresh and new, and a father's love for his daughter is at it should be.

Also, may I add, a lovely book for a gift!

Minfong Ho (author) and Holly Meade (illustrator)
Peek! A Thai Hide-and-Seek
Candlewick, 2004

cranky and cuddly

Who hasn't felt cranky and uninspired by dinner? Who hasn't pushed peas aside and poked dully at meat only to be sent to bed? We have each been the little girl of Hyewon Yum's Last Night, and we have each walked in defeat to our rooms and sought comfort in our stuffed animals. But after this little girl kisses her teddy bear good night, she is awakened to her dreams. The bear brings her into a nocturnal land of joyful dancing, hide-and-seek, and a warm campfire. A satisfying slumber restores her to well-being, and by morning she is ready to give her mother a deeply felt hug. Yum tells the story in images alone, and her richly textured linocuts capture all the range of human feelings and gestures. From the mother's frustrated and impatient stance, to the little girl's angry non-eating and dejected march up the stairs, to the teddy bear's wide-eyed anticipation, and finally, to the little girl's full-body euphoria and genuine love for her mother. The illustrations invite repeated viewing, and perceptive readers will appreciate the clever use of shadows to amplify the emotional content as well as to make visible the intersection of imaginary and everyday worlds.

I've heard from a reader that The Story about Ping is, odd as it sounds to me, a favorite gift to adoptive parents of Chinese girls. I think that there are many more appropriate alternatives, among them, Last Night.

Hyewon Yum
Last Night
Farrar Straus Giroux, 2008

sumo attitude

Hirotaka Nakagawa's Sumo Boy with the help of Yoshifumi Hasegawa's art brut illustration style delivers his moves with brash panache. The boy-saves-girl-from-mean-nasty-bully plot is about a lean (and conventional and gender stereotyped) as it gets, but the colorful, urban spectacles are a feast for the eyes. Hasegawa gives us in rough black outlines and bold raucous colors the pageantry of Japan's national sport, the cheek-by-jowl city highrises, and the interior of a crowded noodle shop. If you were not already a fan of Japanese pop culture, it is not too late to answer Sumo Boy's clarion call, "Dosukoi!" Note: check your issues about gender equality and desires for peaceful conflict resolution at the door.

Hirotaka Nakagawa (author) and Yoshifumi Hasegawa (illustrator)
Sumo Boy
Hyperion, 2006

The character of characters

The Chinese written language, which uses graphs instead of an alphabet, is a perennial source of fascination, but also frustration. Here are two books that minimize the frustration and invite English-speaking children (and their adult hangers-on) into that language.


Christoph Niemann's The Pet Dragon: A Story about Adventure, Friendship, and Chinese Characters reminds me of PBS' "Wordworld" program. Niemann selects Chinese characters with strong pictographic qualities and then merges the characters with the illustration. Thus, the two bold strokes of 人 overlap the image of the book's heroine, Lin, providing the reader with a visual association for the Chinese word for "person." Lin and her pet dragon take the reader through a world populated by similar character-image associations. Some work easily. For example, 木，林，森 represent the environment made of tree, woods, and forest in which Lin and the dragon play. Others are a stretch, like 長 as a hand touching the forehead in a gesture of seeing far into the distance to the Great Wall.


Niemann doesn't pretend to teach Chinese. (The book avoids pronunciation, for example.) Rather, his aim, as expressed in his "Dear Reader" letter, is to inspire us and our kids to take a class and learn Chinese. His story may at times seem constrained, but his clear, graphic illustrations do make the learning easy and fun.


If you enjoyed The Pet Dragon, and want another book to take you a bit further, try Peggy Goldstein's Lóng is a Dragon: Chinese Writing for Children. Again, there is the ubiquitous dragon promising excitement, power, and auspiciousness, but Goldstein's book does not unfold as a story. It is, instead, instructional, and in a mere 30 pages, she covers enormous historical, cultural, and linguistic ground. Here, we see in more detail the evolution of select characters from more pictorial, archaic forms to standard, modern ones. She discusses strokes and provides stroke order for writing characters ourselves. Then, she adds pronunciation (using the pinyin Romanization system). She loses no time and begins building on these basics showing us how characters may be combined to form new ones. Place an ear 耳 near a door 門, and you get 聞, which means "to listen." Or, juxtapose fire 火 with mountain 山 to form the compound word for volcano 火山. By the book's end, Goldstein has us writing (and translating) a sentence, and appreciating the auspicious, four-character phrases that typically adorn Chinese homes, restaurants, and commercial establishments. She concludes by bidding congratulations 恭喜 to her readers for their progress in learning Chinese. Goldstein should be congratulated, too, for her fine instruction.


Christoph Niemann
The Pet Dragon: A Story about Adventure, Friendship, and Chinese Characters
Green Willow Books, 2008

Peggy Goldstein

Lóng is a Dragon: Chinese Writing for Children

China Books & Periodicals, Inc., 1991

Ling and Ting

I was planning to wait awhile before reviewing a second (or third...) work by the same author, but twins Ling and Ting had me laughing out loud. So, for you fans of author-illustrator Grace Lin, here is another one.

Ling & Ting: Not Exactly the Same! takes us, I believe, into new territory. This is the first that I have seen of Chinese cultural content (possibly even ethnic content) in the chapter book-early reader format. Lin gives us six short stories about twin sisters whose ordinary lives, like those of all curious and playful kids, are rich with humorous incidents. The stories begin with "The Haircuts," which introduces us to how very similar the twins are, while also helping us to tell them apart. There is, I believe a subtext here, as Lin's insistent, "Not exactly the same!" functions as a retort to the stereotype that all Asians look the same. But the book's tone is spunky not bitter. The ensuing stories combine with a light touch things Chinese (like dumplings and chopsticks) with things not-Chinese (such as magic tricks and going to the library). These girls are clearly comfortable in their skins, partaking of Chinese traditions and American habits as they wish.

The illustration on the Table of Contents nicely captures the mixing of cultures: a table is set with six dinner plates, half of which are accompanied by flatware and the other half by chopsticks, also tea is on offer...with frosted cupcakes!

Grace Lin
Ling & Ting: Not Exactly the Same!
Little, Brown and Company, 2010

Sesame Street strolls down Chinese memory lane

In a word, Big Bird in China is authentic. We live in irony, and a book like this is as bracing as it is hopeful.

The story begins with Big Bird's desire to find a Chinese feathered friend, the fenghuang 鳳凰, or phoenix (frequently paired to the dragon, its mate in mythology). A somewhat contrived, but nevertheless charming Chinese hanging scroll provides four visual clues to aid Big Bird's search. Readers will recognize the first landmark, the Great Wall, but the others are less familiar icons: a sculpture from the spirit path to the Ming tombs, a steeply arched bridge of the type found among the canals in Suzhou, and a pavilion from the Liu Garden, also in Suzhou. (Clearly, Big Bird's itinerary has been carefully circumscribed, as was the rule for foreigners in China in the early 1980s.)

Still, Big Bird and his doggy sidekick Barkley travel with aplomb, introducing an American audience to Chinese places and people, especially children. The story is not complex, but suits the goal of creating a foundation for friendship. The photographs, while supporting the narrative, also function (with thirty years' hindsight) as testimony to breathtaking change.

Through Victor DiNapoli's lens the lovable giant bird is a yellow so bright that he seems a hallucination against the hazy skies (smog from over-dependence on coal?)  and dreary colors of China's city streets and countryside. Telltale signs, figurative and literal, tell of life under the Communist regime: Big Bird and Barkley pose in front of a framed political message to Beijing's citizens in their "struggle" to support four capital city objectives, including government stability and environmental beauty. But even readers who cannot read Chinese can easily see the dark monochrome clothing worn by nearly all as well as the more than occasional People's Liberation Army soldier among the civilians. Since then, the brightness that concentrated itself in Big Bird and his Chinese friend has spread throughout the nascent middle class.

Clearly there are aspects of this book that, were it published today, would undergo a thorough screening, whether political or aesthetic. I am so glad it was published thirty years ago. That is my vote for authenticity.

Big Bird in China
written by Jon Stone with photographs by Victor DiNapoli.
Random House, 1983

Question to readers: Can anyone identify the Chinese girl who befriends Big Bird?

Devouring books

Grace Lin's brightly illustrated Dim Sum for Everyone whets my appetite, literally, as it parades before my eyes the quintessential dishes of one of my favorite ethnic meals. Lin's easy text invites readers to join a Chinese family as they pick and choose among the food carts that wind through the restaurant. Her pictures use shifting points of view to allow both a closeness with the family and overall apprehension of the dim sum experience. Simple outlines and cheerful patterns have immediate appeal, but they also suggest a deliberate naiveté which, like informal doodling, returns nostalgic adults to childhood. Meandering texts add to the ebb and flow of the meal experience. Lin's book serves at once as a primer for new dim sum eaters and an impetus for a trip down memory lane for seasoned foodies. She captures an ambiance that my grandmother call renao 熱鬧, literally warmth and noise. Even as Lin stirs a hunger, her book satisfies.

Grace Lin
Dim Sum for Everyone
Knopf, 2001

One by Ed Young

Many of you have probably read one or more books by Ed Young. Young's books are particularly memorable for their beautiful illustrations, especially if you have a special fondness for dreamy, ethereal effects. That is true of his Caldecott award-winning Lon Po Po: A Red-Riding Hood Story from China. For those of you with some familiarity with Mandarin Chinese, Lon Po Po, is recognizable as "lang popo 狼婆婆," or "wolf grandmama." The subtitle gives a thematic explanation.

Indeed, Lon Po Po's narrative is driven by a wolf in disguise attempting to take advantage. In this instance, three sisters together outwit their terrifying visitor. Young's illustrations take us from a peach-colored sunset when the mother gives careful instruction to her daughters as she departs from home. Nighttime is deep purple and black and indistinct grey shadows. The girls' eyes sparkle with alertness and apprehension; the wolf's eye is shifty and ghastly. With the girls' clever triumph over the craven creature, light—and with it calm—returns to the pictures.

Young's colors envelop the reader, and color is what we first appreciate. But Young is equally attentive to shape (note the extraordinary silhouette of falling wolf) and to composition (the illustrations are sometimes independent square format, sometimes separated-yet-linked panels, like a set of Chinese hanging scrolls or a Japanese folding screen).

Folktales are timeless, and Young's version of Lon Po Po shares in that quality.

Ed Young
Lon Po Po: A Red-Riding Hood Story from China
Philomel Books, 1989

Ping and Punishment

My seven-year-old self remembers a book about a duck named Ping. It remembers only hazily the story. What is more vivid is a feeling of mortification stirred by the pictures of slanty-eyed boat-people. Perhaps that self made an association between the word SPANK and the humiliation endured by the little duck as it finds at last the boat full of ducky cousins that it calls home. Perhaps not. I won't ever know for certain the precise sources of my childhood embarrassment, as those distant memories must now compete with a fresh re-reading of this 1933 book.

The Story about Ping begins with the daily routine of an extended family of ducks who are set loose to forage for the day but must return to a houseboat at night. The last duck to board receives a single "spank on the back" for being tardy. One evening, to avoid certain punishment, Ping decides to hide among the reeds at the shore of the Yangtze (Yangzi) River. The young and naive Ping must then cope with trials that naturally come with being alone. Luck would have it that Ping chances, at last, upon the houseboat. This time, he willingly accepts the lash for the comforts of home.

Clearly, this book is the product of an earlier time, when physical punishment of children was altogether common and when stereotypical images of a timeless and imagined Orient were likewise accepted as the norm. I imagine that The Story about Ping was well received, as the copy I am reading bears a copyright renewal of 1961. But, when a book such as this even made an appearance in my grade school library (let alone was read aloud by the teacher), I made myself as small as possible and hoped that no one would notice me (let alone make a comparison between the slanty-eyed river family and me). Nowadays, the idyllic river scenes in the book bear little resemblance to an industrialized Yangzi river region. The very river itself is home to the world's most massive hydro-electric dam. Similarly, I think that American audiences at large have changed dramatically since the writing of this book.

Marjorie Flack and Kurt Wiese
The Story about Ping
Viking Press, 1933

The first review

Vicky Wong and Michael Murphy form the author-illustrator team Meomi that has given us a picture book favorite, The Octonauts & the Only Lonely Monster. The pictures combine Japanese kawaii (cute) aesthetic with retro hints of The Jetsons and a Putamayo world sensibility. That may sound complicated or taxing, but it isn't. The illustrations are immediately appealing as are the menagerie of characters (polar bear, brown bear, dog, penguin, octopus, cat, bunny, and "vegimal") who make up the big-hearted crew of octonauts. A surprising undersea encounter spurs the octonauts on a mission around the world, which we readers using eyes and hands gladly follow. We meet colorful creatures whose multilingual greetings pepper the pages with imaginary local color. The journey ends in a happy homecoming that revels in the idiosyncrasies of one and all.

I loved this book instantly, and I love it still.

The Octonauts & the Only Lonely Monster
Meomi
Immedium, Inc., 2006