Delicious

Margaret and Raymond Chang (retelling)

David Johnson (illustrations)

The Beggar's Magic: A Chinese Tale

Simon and Schuster, 1997

When a Daoist beggar comes to the small village, it is only a matter of time before parsimonious Farmer Wu is served his just desserts. First to welcome the beggar, the young and the infirm are early witnesses to his unselfish magic. Fu Nan, especially, warms to the beggar's ways. At the August Moon Festival, when stingy Farmer Wu refuses to give the beggar a pear from the cartful he is selling, Fu Nan chooses to spend his kite-money to buy one for him. In consequence, the beggar treats the villagers to a magical, moralizing spectacle grown from a single pear seed. I found Margaret and Raymond Chang's retelling of a strange tale collected by Pu Songling (1640-1715) captivating. Their light touch is matched in David Johnson's illustrations.

Pint-sized underdog exceeds all expectations, and gets the girl

Helen Smith (adaptation)
Junko Morimoto (illustrations)
The Inch Boy
Puffin, 1984

After an old couple ask the Buddha for a child, they discover a one-inch-long baby crying outside their home. They name him Issonboshi for his diminutive figure, but his ambitions are super-sized. Seeking to become a samurai to the Lord Sanjo, Issonboshi proves his mettle when facing down the red demon threatening Sanjo's daughter, Makiko. Predictable in plot and stereotype, The Inch Boy is nevertheless charming.

Looking for less sun, more shine

Eric A. Kimmel (retelling)

Yongsheng Xuan (illustrator)

Ten Suns: A Chinese Legend

Holiday House, 1998

Indeed, the story of Hou Yi, the archer who shot down nine of ten suns to save the earth from being scorched, is, well, legendary in Chinese culture. And so, retelling such a story has its challenges. Eric A. Kimmel begins with a fantastic and compelling image of a wondrous palace atop a giant mulberry tree. But I found the following pages less interesting. The suns' personification as sons made it difficult to accept their being shot by arrows. And, it was little comfort that the shots didn't kill but merely transformed them into crows. Yongsheng Xuan's illustrations are an odd mixture of Soviet-influenced socialist realism (the image of the bare-chested Hu Yi is so hard-edged as to warrant literally the descriptive term "cut") and a Chinese vernacular taste for technicolor. His style gave Ten Suns for me a kind of artificiality. Further, without an image of a real person suffering from the ten-sun drought, I found the narrative's dramatic urgency false. 

Hunter, Guardian

Mary Casanova (retelling)

Ed Young (illustrations)

The Hunter

Atheneum, 2004

  Hunter Hai Li Bu wants nothing more than to provide the people of his village—children, young women, and white-haired elders—with food. When drought comes, his skills become critical to the village’s survival. As he searches for game, he chances upon a snake one day and rescues it from the clutches of a crane. As reward for saving his daughter, the Dragon King offers Hai Li Bu anything he wishes from his immense treasures. The hunter wants only to improves his skills, and so the Dragon King gives his the gift of understanding what the animals say. The gift, in the form of a pearly stone, must not be revealed, however, lest Hai Li Bu be himself transformed into stone. His hunting improves and the village flourishes until Hai Li Bu hears from the animals of an imminent flood. His love for and loyalty to his village are put to a fateful test.

  Ed Young’s ink and color illustrations powerfully capture the deep emotions and high stakes of this folktale.

Silly wisdom

Demi

The Donkey and the Rock

Henry Holt, 1999

A fable set in pre-modern Tibet, The Donkey and the Rock features two poor men each eking out a living as best he can to support large households. When one man’s donkey crashes into the other man’s jar of oil set upon a rock, their lives come to a impasse. Unable to resolve the dispute, the seek the king’s good judgement. The king sees the goodness and honesty of both men, and he lays blame instead on the donkey and the rock. Driven by curiosity, the community attends the spectacular trial. But tables are turned as the wise king penalizes the people for their succumbing to their folly. Really, everyone knows “...there is no law by which to judge a donkey and a rock.” Ten coins was a small price for a valuable lesson.

   If you have seen Demi’s charming illustrations, you know that they generally fit obediently into their spaces. She breaks this pattern to dramatic effect:  when the donkey tips the jar of oil, it is as if Jackson Pollock’s paint-laden brush dripped in for a visit.

Love Seen and Lost

Sumiko Yagawa (retelling)
Katherine Paterson (translation)
Kuekichi Akaba (illustrations)
The Crane Wife
William Morrow, 1981

Yohei, the Japanese everyman who was last encountered in this blog as a the son of a fishmonger, is in The Crane Wife a poor peasant in a mountain village. After he helps a wounded crane, a beautiful young woman knocks on his door and asks to become his wife. As the couple struggles to make it through the cold winter, she offers to weave cloth to sell in the market on the condition that Yohei refrain from watching her at the loom. Inevitably, predictably, and tragically he cannot restrain himself. In the end, Yohei is left with a bolt of gorgeous, unearthly cloth and no wife. Enthusiasts of Greek myths may hear in this Japanese folktale echoes of Psyche and Cupid. Kuekichi Akaba's illustrations are like the crane wife herself, delicate and enchanting and elusive. Beside her eloquent English rendering, Katherine Paterson gives us a note about the understandable popularity of the crane wife story in Japanese culture.

Kitchen Maid and One-eyed Steward Live Happily Ever After

Katherine Paterson (author)

Leo and Diane Dillon

The Tale of the Mandarin Ducks

Lodestar, 1990

The gorgeous plumage of a male mandarin duck captures the attention of a Japanese lord who delights in the possession of beautiful things. The lord's one-eyed retainer, Shozo, however, sees more deeply. Shozo knows that the drake will languish and die in captivity, but his compassionate advice to let the bird go earns only the lord's scorn. Katherine Paterson crafts a classic tale pitting power and vanity against against charity. Inspired by Japanese woodblock prints, Leo and Diane Dillon's eye-catching illustrations lure us into this tale about sight and insight.

Peach-boy, superhero

Stephanie Wada (retelling)
Kano Naganobu (paintings)
Momotarō and the Island of Ogres
George Braziller, 2005

Since East Asian painting has long interested me, I was delighted to find this illustrated folktale. Stephanie Wada, a curator of Japanese art, illustrates her retelling of Momotarō with details taken from a set of two handscroll paintings by Kano Naganobu (1775-1828), a painter to the Tokugawa shogunate. The wide, skinny format of the book shows parts of the painting to their best advantage. As we follow the adopted Momotarō, born from a peach, along his journey to Onigashima (the island of ogres), we are treated to splendid landscapes of rivers and mountains, scenes of confrontation and battle, and views of triumph and celebration. The images are subtler than your run-of-the-mill picture book, and the prose more adult. Together, images and text demand and reward more careful engagement. If only we could have kibi-dango dumplings as part of our reward, too!

Follow that cat

Koko Nishizuka (author)

Rosanne Litzinger (illustrator)

The Beckoning Cat: Based on a Japanese Folktale

Holiday House, 2009

You know the one. The one that sits at restaurants and supermarkets and gift shops starting wide-eyed and raising a single paw at you. That's the one. They are everywhere, and apparently it all started with Yohei, a Japanese "everyboy." Yohei is a fishmonger who sells his fresh catch door-to-door. But when father falls ill, he must forego his work and meager earnings to look after his father at home. Despite the family's poverty, Yohei always shared some fish with a white cat, who now returns his generosity by beckoning customers to his home. Story and pictures are cute, and it's generally nice to reinforce the belief that goodness is rewarded, but there is not much more than that. I'm glad to have an explanation of the beckoning kitties, but now I'm left wondering, why do blue morning glories appear throughout the story?

3 stones + generosity = happiness

Jon J Muth
Stone Soup
Scholastic, 2003

With his quietly enchanting watercolors and light narrative touch, Jon J Muth transposes the European folk tale into a traditional Chinese setting. Three monks in lieu of soldiers arrive at the shuttered gates and windows of a town populated by villages who have long distrusted one another. Undisturbed, the monks set about gathering twigs and preparing stone soup. A young girl, curious and willing to open her heart, queries the monks and responds to their need for a bigger pot. Her action begins a virtuous cycle that leads to a communal feast. Get it, read it, share it, and keep the inspiration going.

Frightful fruit

Janie Jaehyun Park 

The Tiger and the Dried Persimmon

Groundwood Books, 2002

I always find it interesting to compare two or more versions of the same story, and so it was exciting to find another telling of this Korean folktale. What I like best about Janie Jaehyun Park's The Tiger and the Dried Persimmon are her illustrations. The stylized imagery of fungus-shaped clouds, layered hills, and downright goofy-looking tiger is drawn from traditional East Asian painting. Her colors and textures, though, are more of the Impressionist to Post-impression kinds. The combination (which is being explored by contemporary Chinese artists such as Zhang Hongtu) is anything but derivative. Park's prose pales next to her vivid pictures, and her telling demonstrates the key role played by the rabbit in Suzanne Crowder Han's version, but the pathetic tiger's face sticks. 

Not the Easter bunny

Suzanne Crowder Han (retelling)
Richard Wehrman (illustrator)
The Rabbit's Tail: A Story from Korea
Henry Holt, 1999

Readers familiar with this folktale will see the pun in the title—a tale about a tail. Some folktales convey a needed lesson for proper socialization; others are clever explanations for why things are the way they are. Suzanne Crowder Han's The Rabbit's Tail belongs to the latter category. A hilarious chain of misunderstandings begins with Tiger's unfamiliarity with dried persimmons. (And, just in case you don't know, it's a dried fruit, common in East Asia.) When he hears a baby hush at the mention of dried persimmons, Tiger imagines a being far more powerful than himself. Fearful, he seeks a hiding place in the barn. When a thief comes to steal an ox, he mistakes Tiger for a calf, which he ropes and then rides. Not seeing the thief, Tiger imagines that the dried persimmon has come after him. The thief soon realizes his error, and fears for his life. I am tempted to go on, but it would be too much of a spoiler. So, I'll just note that when the rabbit tries to spell out what is what, he probably didn't plan on losing his tail for it.

binga-binga

Katherine Paterson (translator)
Momoko Issii (author)
Suekichi Akaba (illustrator)
The Tongue-cut Sparrow
Lonestar Books, E. F. Dutton, 1987

Binga-binga, or sparkling clean, is how the old man renders first an ox and then a horse as he seeks the home of the tongue-cut sparrow. After performing these menial tasks with care, he meets the sparrow and offers an apology for his wife's cruelty (she was the one who snipped its tongue). In return, the sparrow offers the man a fine meal and the choice of two baskets, large or small, to take home. But...he must not open the basket until he reaches home. Heeding the sparrow's caution, he returns home where he and his wife are astonished by the treasure inside the basket. The thought of more treasure fills the old woman with greed. Thus, she makes her own trek to the home of the tongue-cut sparrow, leaving in her wake, gosho-gosho, a poorly washed ox and a poorly washed horse. Although we all know she will get her just desserts, it is still great fun to read about it. A series of onomatopoetic Japanese terms gives our own tongues some fun, and the caricatured expressions in Suekichi Akaba's spare illustrations are cute, monstrous, and funny. Words and images work together to stamp this folktale and its moral into our memory.

Giant Rice Cake Is Couple's Reward

Ann Tompert (author)
Demi (illustrator)
Bamboo Hats and a Rice Cake: a tale adapted from Japanese folklore
Crown, 1993

An old couple wish to have traditional rice cakes for the New Year, but they are very poor. Husband and wife agree to trade her 着物 (kimono) for 餅 (rice cakes). On his way to the market, the old man stops to brush the snow off six Jizo statues, promising to share 餅 on his return. Even before reaching the market, the old man begins to barter. First, the 着物 for some 扇 (fans), then 扇 for a gold 鈴 (bell), and so on until he leaves the market with five 笠 (bamboo hats). Along with his own, the old man gives the hats to the six Jizo before he returns home empty handed. His wife is not disappointed, but proud of her husband's kindness, and their virtues are rewarded. Ann Tompert's adaptation is moving, and incorporates kanji like rebuses. She carefully selects the characters so as to introduce readers to another language while reinforcing the narrative flow. Demi's illustrations are consistently delicate, sensitive, and alluring.

Princess warrior

Judy Sierra (author)

Meilo So (illustrator)

Tasty Baby Belly Buttons

Knopf, 1999

Maybe it's because I spent the afternoon making dumplings with my mother and nostalgia got a hold of me, which makes me declare about Judy Sierra's Tasty Baby Belly Buttons, loved it! I loved the melon princess, Uriko-hime, who born from a melon was without a belly button. But, she had ample doses of justice, courage, and sympathy on which she drew to rescue her village's babies from the monstrous oni whose favorite delicacy is the delicious infant navel. I loved also the text's sprinkling of Japanese onomatopoetic words—tsunbara, tsunbara and tonkoto, tonkoto and boro, boro and the like—which make the folktale a delight to read aloud and to hear. I loved also the watercolor illustrations, which are done with verve. Uriko-hime's two-tone, melon-colored robe with watermelon seed accents is something that I'd love to see supersede some of American girlhood's prevailing frothy pink tulle with sparkly this and that. Read it, and love it, too.

Think different

Ippo Keido (retelling) and Kazuko G. Stone (illustrations)
The Butterfly's Dream
Tuttle, 2003

Ippo Keido uses the story of Chuang-tzu's (Zhuangzi 莊子) dream to enfold a series of other stories about vision. We see by turns the vast viewpoint of the giant fish-bird and the circumscribed world of the frog sitting in the depths of the well. Although I've heard it many times, I can't help but laugh at the tale of the monkey trainer, who satisfies his simian charges by reversing the daily regimen of 3 chestnuts in the morning and 4 chestnuts in the evening. Keido rounds out the stories with the "wooden" rooster whose power is hidden behind stealthy discipline; the useless tree, which thrives because it is too crooked, too heavy, and too hard for commercial use; and Hui-tzu's giant gourds, which outgrow conventional purposes. The lesson is to think differently. Kazuko Stone's illustrations are occasionally awkward, as when an emperor hovers at odd corners near the rooster-training exercises or when the so-called useless tree looks not at all crooked. But, the color and charm will be engaging for readers young and old, just as these Daoist tales continue to offer relevant, trenchant lessons.

Charmed

Robert D. San Souci (author)

Yoriko Ito (illustrator)

The Silver Charm: A Folktale from Japan

Doubleday, 2002

After young Satsu has snacked on wild berries, he gives his silver charm as payment to an ogre so that he may escape. But the berries sicken him, rendering him unconscious on the beach. Fortunately, his loyal pets, a pup and a young fox, lead Satsu's parents to their lost boy. But Satsu is not yet out of danger. The wise man observes that Satsu illness will not leave unless his silver charm is recovered. The resourceful and compassionate animal pair team up with a plucky mouse to save their beloved Satsu. Yoriko Ito's enchanting watercolor illustrations accompany this sweet folktale.

Talk does not cook rice

Robert Wyndham (author)
Jay Yang (illustrations)
Tales the People Tell in China
Julian Messner, 1971

Robert Wyndham anthologizes twelve Chinese stories and throws three anecdotes and a dozen or so aphorisms into a lively mix. Many stories read like fables, with a useful lesson or two for living well. In "The Young Head of the Cheng Family" (translated from 巧媳婦, meaning clever wife), Precious Jade instructs her future sisters-in-law on the means of wrapping fire and catching wind in paper. She uses her cleverness to help her family prosper, even boldly outsmarting a local magistrate. For male ingenuity, Wyndham includes the famous Three Kingdoms' story of Kongming "borrowing" ten thousand arrows by tricking his enemy Cao Cao to shoot at ships loaded with hay bales. Jay Yang's charming, black-and-white illustrations draw from traditional Chinese prints as well as compositions of masterpieces (e.g., Spring Festival on the River) and styles of famous painters (e.g., Chen Hongshou). The modest-sized book is a jewel, with a fine selection of tales, rendered in easy, fluid prose, peppered with good humor. Here, are a few of the aphorisms to whet your appetite:
  A teacher can open the door, but the pupil must go through by himself.
  The wise man listens to his own mind, the foolish man heeds the mob.
  Water and words are easy to pour, but impossible to recover.
  Patience and the mulberry leaf become a silk gown.
  Talk does not cook rice.

Holiday stories and fun

Nina Simonds, Leslie Swartz, & The Children's Museum, Boston (authors)

Meilo So (illustrator)

Moonbeams, Dumplings & Dragon Boats: 

A Treasury of Chinese Holiday Tales, Activities & Recipes

This kind of anthology is generally not my favorite type of book, but if you are looking for a single book about Chinese holidays, their associated folk tales, and traditions, this one is a good one. Too often, anthologies overwhelm and flatten their subject. Fortunately, rather than going with an encyclopedic approach, these authors have exercised care in their selection of topics and related stories, activities, and recipes.  

  The book is divided into four chapters according to four major holidays (counting New Year and the Lantern Festival as one). Folk tales include less common ones. I enjoyed the one of Dongfang Shuo whose cleverness saved Chang'an and makes sense of new year's show of firecrackers, fireworks, and lanterns. The tale of Jie Zitui, which involves an episode of self-sacrificing cuisine, is not for the squeamish and reminds us of how bracing folk tales really are. While I didn't try out the crafts and recipes, I can imagine that parents and teachers, as well as children, will enjoy them. The list of resources is excellent, and the guide to pronunciation is just about the best I have encountered.

Cinderella's sister

Alan Schroeder (author) and Yoriko Ito (illustrator)
Lily and the Wooden Bowl
Doubleday, 1994

This lovely, traditional folktale rewards the virtuous and beautiful Lily with marriage to the noble and handsome Kumaso. Hints of the Cinderella story abound. Upon her death, a loving grandmother grants with three magical objects to protect her Lily: a rice paddle, a paper crane, and a lacquered wooden bowl. The objects come to Lily's rescue as she must defend herself against a venal and jealous mother figure, Matsu, who is not coincidentally Kumaso's mother. Matsu uses sorcery and lies to try to cast Lily from the household, but Kumaso and his father Yamoto both see the truth of Lily's innocence. Alan Schroeder's retelling flows beautifully; Yoriko Ito's illustrations are gentle, dreamlike, and dramatic. Whatever your opinion on the power and value of feminine beauty, and the impact of concealing it, the wooden bowl is an alluring symbol used to narrative and visual advantage here.