More family, food, and fun

Lenore Look (author) and Yumi Heo (illustrator)
Henry's First Moon Birthday
Atheneum, 2001

Older Sister Jen is our confident and expert guide to the celebration of her baby brother's first moon, or full moon (in Mandarin, 滿月 manyue). Jen trails her grandmother, known as GninGnin (I believe this is Cantonese for 奶奶), whose commanding presence and sure knowledge are central to the performing this tradition. She cooks the chicken soup, decorates with calligraphed characters for luck, and prepares the lucky red eggs. Mother cleans, Father picks up relatives, and Jen keeps the cousins in line. Yumi Heo's plucky figures and cheerful patterns accompany Lenore Look's account of this quintessential Chinese celebration of family.

Comfort food

Grace Lin
Thanking the Moon: Celebrating the Mid-Autumn Moon Festival
Knopf, 2010

Grace Lin is now my go-to author for comfort food, especially those seasonal yummies that say holiday. Thanking the Moon follows her sisters and parents to a park where together they set up an altar with delicious offerings to the harvest moon, which appears sometime in September or October according to the lunar calendar. Lin's cheerful colors and easy patterns, as always, invite the reader to share in the community celebration.

A year to grow

Andrea Cheng (author) and Nicole Wong (illustrator)
Only One Year
Lee and Low, 2010

Here are two things—a word and an image—that made Andrea Cheng's new chapter book about difference, family, and love one of the finest books I have read. The word is "weird," which is loaded with unspoken intimations of fear. She uses the word just once. Uttered by  a child's friend, it clearly polices the boundary between acceptable and dubious. Sharon, invokes her mother's reasoning to defend against the stinging charge, but it's clear that the ideas and emotions behind "weird" are not easily changed. Cheng has me on the alert now for this word. The image is a sliced apple, with some slices placed at one side of a plate opposite the others. Mama tells her children Sharon (4th grade), Mary (1st grade), Di Di (a preschooler), and us that the slices may be far apart but like family in the US and family in China, they make one circle. One circle that nourishes its members, as Di Di gobbles down the apple. The image captures the book's narrative and its themes.

There is much more to recommended Only One Year—from the thoughtful treatment of the difficult decision to send Di Di to live with his grandparents in Shanghai for a year to the recurring images of childhood play that transform everyday objects and activities into opportunities to stretch the imagination and to express love. The book is refreshingly devoid of cynicism and status markers. It challenges us all to overcome our fears and egos, to forgive ourselves and others, and to make meaningful relationships with each other.

For more about author Andrea Cheng, go to her website: http://www.andreacheng.com/home

Look again

Jay Williams (author) and Mercer Mayer (illustrator)
Everyone Knows What a Dragon Looks Like
Four Winds, 1976

After reading dozens of picture books, I was beginning to feel my eyes dulling to a range of illustration styles. There is the brightly colored, folk-vernacular approach, and then there is the dreamy, evocative vision, and then there is the fine detail and brilliance of watercolors. After this steady diet, Mercer Mayer's illustrations came like a surprise feast.

With ink pen and colors, Mayer captures in an uncanny way the sensitive line and signature conventions of Chinese landscape painting. To that he adds, peasants, officials, and warriors who are a fresh mixture of Chinese figure painting with their medieval cousins like elves and trolls and knights (think Tolkien) with a dash of visual wittiness a la Maurice Sendak. Such mixing can be tricky, but apart from the glowing dragon in the sky, I was happily seduced into Mayer's visual world. The art historian in me smiled a knowing smile at Mayer's visual reference to the masterful knickknack peddler paintings by Song-dynasty painter Li Song.

Mayer's knotty, gnarled pine trees set against rocky cliffs create the seemingly timeless setting for a pre-modern Chinese city where Jay Williams' tale unfolds. The city has reason to expect an imminent attack, and among several strategies, the city's Mandarin determines to pray to the Great Cloud Dragon for aid. Then a fat, bald, old man (think the auspicious Buddhist character, Budai) appears claiming to be the Great Cloud Dragon. The powers that be predictably dismiss him, but the young gate-keeper Han motivated more by humanity than belief offers hospitality. Han's virtue saves the city, reminding us to keep our eyes and our hearts open to magic, miracles, and all that good stuff that can be appear in the wrappings of the everyday.

Taking flight

Marissa Moss (author) and Carl Angel (illustrator)
Sky High: The True Story of Maggie Gee
Tricycle, 2009

Moss tells the story of Maggie Gee, a Chinese-American pilot in the Women Airforce Service Pilots, or WASP (I am not making up that acronym), in the first person. The time is the World War II, and women throughout the US have entered the workforce and enlisted to support the war effort. Gee jumps at this chance to pursue her childhood dream of flying airplanes.

Of 25,000 applicants, Gee is among 1,037 who graduate from flight school and becomes a WASP. Although the WASP never see combat, they help train other pilots and fly 60 million miles combined in missions. Moss' narrative includes an anecdote highlighting race. After a difficult landing involving another plane, Gee observes the other pilot's fright when he mistakes Gee's Asian features for Japanese enemy. "I felt like an exhibit at the county fair, a two-headed cow, the amazing Chinese American WASP." But the feeling lasts only a moment, as Gee quickly announces her citizenship and loyalties and resumes her identity as pilot, pure and simple.

In contrast to Sixteen Years in Sixteen Seconds: The Sammy Lee Story, Gee's biography reveals little discrimination and no generational conflict. In her case, the exigencies of war trump race; and the particulars of her goals are generalized as a story, equally valid as the stories of her mother and her grandmother.

Taking the plunge

Paula Yoo (author) and Dom Lee (illustrator)
Sixteen Years in Sixteen Seconds: The Sammy Lee Story
Lee and Low, 2005

Paula Yoo's true story of Korean-American Sammy Lee (born in 1920 in Fresno, California) traces Lee's olympic triumphs. He placed first in the 10-meter platform diving event in the 1948 games in London, and in doing so, Lee was the first Asian-American to win a gold medal. Four years later, Lee successfully defended his gold in Helsinki.

On the path to success, Lee encountered two formidable challenges. Discriminatory policies limited his access to the public pool, and so Lee dug a hole in his backyard, filled it with sand, and used that for practice. When Lee's immigrant father withheld support for athletics in favor of academics, Lee "struck a deal." If Lee earned marks high enough for medical school, then he could dive to his heart's desire.

Lee's dreams, those of his father, as well as the hallowed American dream all come true, and Lee's story continues to resonate, as young Asian-Americans struggle with negotiating ever-shifting American norms and with the aspirations and expectations of parents. In this context, Lee's story may be equal parts oppression and inspiration. How realistic is it to match Lee's achievements? Can any individual do it all and please everyone? As educators and parents express increasing concern about the programmed and stressful lives of students and children, Yoo's book offers an opportunity to discuss which goals to pursue and why.

Another whirl around the sun

Ed Young
Cat and Rat: The Legend of the Chinese Zodiac
Holt, 1995

Pondering about the new year, resolutions, and traditions, I thought that Ed Young's Cat and Rat would be a fitting book to begin 2011. Young's retelling of the Chinese zodiac story comes closest to my mother's version, which focused on explaining the antagonistic relationship between felines and rodents. Once they were friends, but the legendary race that pitted hare against horse and feathers against scales, killed that camaraderie. The flying and the fleet were no match for the cunning and unscrupulous. Young's prose focuses on the competition and the count as each animal crosses the finish: Number one! Number two! and so forth. His illustrations are replete with movement and intensity, flaring nostrils and wide-eyed effort, but they are also quite dark and rather hazy with charcoal smudges. And the black background adds to the darkness. In my mind's eye, the race should take place under brilliant sun and festive atmosphere. But given the rat's treachery, Young's interpretation may be more appropriate. The guide to the zodiac at the book's beginning reveals your personal traits.

Speaking of counting, I thought it was a good time to mark my progress toward 365 books.

45 reviews in November plus 18 reviews in December make 63 book reviews in 2010. This is review #64.