Using free verse poetry, Kam Mak tells the story of a young boy whose family has suddenly relocated from Hong Kong to New York’s Chinatown. As any young child would be, the narrator feels alone in his new home and homesick for Hong Kong. Mak’s verse and choice of words invoke the unfamiliarity the young boy feels: “The English words taste like metal in my mouth.”

Slowly the boy begins to realize that Chinatown shares many of the things he loved about his homeland—there are the same Dragon Boat races and the same moon cakes for Chinese New Year. There are the same kumquats, piled high on a cart in Chinatown that his beloved grandmother used to pickle as a special treat. Father even surprises him with an animal chess game like the one he and his sister played in Hong Kong and he beats his sister “Just like home.”

He makes friends in the neighborhood with whom he plays his favorite American game—kick the can. The people in the neighborhood, like the cobbler, begin to become familiar and there is even a favorite store—one that sells paper dragons, birds, and butterflies.

As he sits beside his mother, the routine sound of her sewing machine lulls him to sleep. There is excitement too in the Dragon Boat races, Moon Festival, and Chinese New Year celebrations. As the seasons change to become a year, the young boy begins to feel a sense of belonging and Chinatown becomes home.

Mak’s full-page illustrations are brightly colored and beautifully rendered, as clear as photographs. They depict everyday life in Chinatown unlike many books on Chinatown that focus only on the festivals and holiday celebrations. As John Peters said in School Library Journal, “There are no colorful urban street scenes or (with the exception of the Dragon Boat race) panoramic views in Mak’s sober, extraordinary paintings. Instead, he focuses on individual figures--a curbside fortune-teller, a cobbler, a wide-eyed child drinking in a shop--rendered with photographic realism and placed against plain, undecorated backgrounds.”

An insider, Mak grew up in Chinatown, what the book’s jacket describes as “a place of two cultures, one existing within the other.” Cultural markers prevail throughout the book. The characters have warm brown colored skin and glossy black hair. Foods such as tofu in syrup, noodles, sweet rice cakes, and fish balls are named. After his mother chooses a fish for dinner, like many children of any descent, the narrator feigns ill so he doesn’t have to eat his friend.

The book of course mentions many Chinese traditions, like Moon Festival and Chinese New Year. In addition Mak illustrates some of the customs associated with those days, like an envelope with money traditionally given to children, red paper littering the streets from firecrackers after the New Year’s celebrations, and Moon cakes during the Moon Festival.

The verse told from the first-person perspective paired with the brilliant illustrations combine to tell a story that is universal to many—coming to terms with a new home and the feeling of belonging. As Gillian Engberg stated in her Booklist review, "The words and pictures work beautifully together; both glow with a quiet intensity that complements rather than overpowers the other. Whether or not they've known displacement, readers will come away with a deeper interest in Chinatown’s culture and in immigration stories in general."

Engberg, Gillian. 2001. Booklist. (1 December). Available from Books In Print (database online). Accessed 19 July 2005.

 

Peters, John. 2002. School Library Journal 48 (May no 5). Available from Academic Search Premier (database online). Accessed 19 July 2005. 

Laurence Yep tells the touching story of a Chinese American family’s struggle to fit in in their new town in West Virginia. Set in 1927, fifteen-year-old Joan’s family takes the train from Lima, Ohio to Clarksburg, West Virginia to start a laundry service.

As soon as the family arrives in their new town, they face racism from the locals. A man on the train calls them “monkeys.” After they settle in their new home, someone paints the fence with the message “Go Hoom” The school administration treats them differently from other students. Says Joan, “She acted as if we were fresh off the boat, and that attitude annoyed me.”

Joan and her sister befriend the landlady, Miss Lucy, who has them over for tea and treats them like adults. Her younger brother and sister make friends quickly. Yet Joan has a hard time making friends her age. There is the usual clique that snubs her and there is the mysterious Bernice who Joan can’t seem to get things right with. First Joan insults her because she, afraid to let her classmate see her paltry lettuce sandwiches, refuses an invitation to eat lunch together. Then Joan pays Bernice a visit at her home and sees that she too is seen as an outsider in the town. Joan resolves to make friends.

Meanwhile, other characters are struggling in their own right. Never a cook because she was the youngest, Mama consistently burns dinner, ruining the little food that the family has. She sees Miss Lucy’s offer of leftovers and cooking lessons as charity and refuses. Soon, however, with Joan’s assistance, a friendship forms between the two ladies in spite of their language barriers.

Yep makes use of subtle cultural markers throughout the book.  Joan struggles to bridge her cultures-Chinese and American-while her mother and father are reluctant to assimilate to American ways. Mother doesn’t speak English, so she relies on the children to run errands for her. She insists that the children use Chinese in her presence despite their protests that “people stare when we use Chinese.” Chinese words are not used in the book, but Yep employs an interesting device to show their use: He tells the reader to assume that everything is spoken in Chinese except for that which is italicized.

Other cultural markers include Papa’s use of proverbs in his dismay such as “It used to be fragrant ink, stinking money.” In China, Papa was an esteemed scholar and calligrapher. Mama burns more than one serving of the family staple: rice. Joan tells her little sister an old Chinese tale about the Star Fisher, who is stuck between heaven and earth trying to find her place.

Yep’s Star Fisher does a great job of bucking stereotypes by portraying strong characters. For example, Joan is smart, but not a natural born whiz, polite, but strong-willed, and maybe most important, like every teenager, unsure of herself and yearning to make friends and find her place in a new school and new place. In the end, Joan, like the Star Fisher finds her niche.

As a reviewer for Horn Book Magazine so aptly stated, “It is disturbing but never depressing, poignant but not melancholy, for the principal characters - particularly Mama, who almost steals the show - are individuals with a strong sense of their own worth, facing difficulties with humor, determination, and pride.”

1991. Horn Book Magazine 67 (May/Jun no 3): p334. In Academic Search Premier (database online). Accessed 23 July 2005.

Allen Say’s Home of the Brave is a surrealistic picture book about Japanese internment camps. A kayaker sets off down a waterfall, and is swept under by the water. When he regains consciousness, the kayaker realizes that he is in an underground cave. He finds a ladder illuminated by a ray of light and climbs the ladder. When he emerges from the cave, the man is confronted by a desert and some earthen buildings. He assumes he is on an Indian reservation.

Seeing figures in the distance, the man walks toward them and comes upon two young children wearing tags on their coats. Guessing the children are lost, he sets out with them to find a refuge. They reach “camp” and a large group of children who stand “before him like one large body with many eyes.” Suddenly they are jolted by a loud speaker and a beam of light warning them to get inside.

The children disappear and the man comes across a hole in the ground with a ladder. Nearby lays a single nametag with the same name as his mother’s. He grows drowsy and falls asleep. When he comes to, the man is surrounded by a group of children. His kayak is nearby. He finds more name tags and jumps up and releases them like “a great flock of birds.”

The author explains in a note at the end of the book that he was inspired after viewing an exhibition on the World War II internment camps in the United States. “More than 120,000 Japanese Americans interned in ten camps in six western camps,” he states. While the story is an important one that needs to be told, Say’s story will be very confusing for young readers.

As Hazel Rochman said in Booklist, “Say is just too elliptical this time--and yet he does pose troubling questions about the West as the land of the free and the home of the brave.” In Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books, Deborah Stevenson said, “From the text and the author's note, this seems to be a deeply felt personal response to the internment camps, but the allegorical approach is unfortunately more distancing and confusing than enlightening, leaving contextless young readers floundering.”

The book is beautifully illustrated with Say’s realistic, haunting images in watercolor. The full page illustrations in grey, black, and tan shades invoke the sadness of the reality.

Cultural markers are prevalent in the story. The Indian Reservation has a realistic adobe ruin. The realism of the desert setting of the internment camps is cemented by the dust storm. The children in the internment camp live in dozens of identical houses made of wood and tar paper in the desert. The children wear identical paper name tags and all have glossy black hair, tan skin and rosy cheeks. 

Children will need to share the story with an adult reader who can explain the internment camps. Nonetheless, the book is beautiful and delicately handles the subject matter in its puzzling dreamlike sequence, telling young readers a powerful story.

Rochman, Hazel. 2002. Booklist (15 February). Available from Books In Print (database online). Accessed 21 July 2005.

 

Stevenson, Deborah. 2002. Bulletin of the center for children's books 55 (June no 10): 382. Avalable from FirstSeach (database online). Accessed 21 July 2005.