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