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Yeh-Shen: A Cinderella Story from China
Retold by: Ai-Ling Louie
Illustrated by: Ed Young
Philomel Books
1982
For ages 4-8
32 pgs.
Reviewer: Tarie


The story of Yeh-Shen, one of the oldest versions of Cinderella, dates from the T'ang dynasty in China (618-907 A.D.). It even predates the oldest European version of Cinderella, which is an Italian story from 1634.

Yeh-Shen is an orphan who lives with her stepmother and stepsister. She is given the heaviest and most unpleasant chores and not enough food to eat because her stepmother resents how Yeh-Shen is much more beautiful than her own daughter. Yeh-Shen's only friend is a fish in a pond. Her stepmother kills the fish and cooks it for dinner. An old sage reveals to Yeh-Shen that the bones of the fish are filled with a powerful spirit. Whenever Yeh-Shen is in serious need, she can kneel before the fish bones and they will grant her heart's desire.

One year, Yeh-Shen longs to go to the village spring festival, but her stepmother will not allow her. Yeh-Shen kneels before the fish bones and wishes to go to the festival. Immediately she finds herself in an azure blue gown, kingfisher feather cloak, and gold slippers. At the festival, people wonder who Yeh-Shen is. She is so beautiful that she seems like a heavenly being. When her stepsister sees her, Yeh-Shen runs home and loses one of her gold slippers along the way.

A villager finds the slipper and sells it to a merchant who in turn gives it to a king. The king is so fascinated by the tiny slipper that he searches for its owner. The slipper is placed in a pavilion by the road and many women, including Yeh-Shen's stepmother and stepsister, try it on in the hopes of claiming it. Yeh-Shen doesn't go to the pavilion until very late at night and when she takes the slipper, at first the king thinks that she is a thief. Then he notices that Yeh-Shen is beautiful and has the tiniest feet he has ever seen. He follows Yeh-Shen home and asks her to put on the slippers. As soon as Yeh-Shen is wearing the slippers, she once again finds herself in an azure blue gown and a kingfisher feather cloak. The king falls in love with her and they live happily ever after.

Yeh-Shen's story may seem even more fantastical than the Disney version of Cinderella, but because of Ai-Ling Louie's prose and storytelling skills and Ed Young's illustrations, readers young and young at heart will eat this book up. The watercolor and colored pencil illustrations are uncannily both detailed and impressionistic. They are sublime, as per usual with Young's illustrations.

What I found most interesting about Yeh-Shen: A Cinderella Story from China is how it depicts certain elements of ancient Chinese culture: the desirability of tiny feet on a woman and the association of fish with good fortune.

Yeh-Shen: A Cinderella Story f

Hip Hop Speaks to Children: A Celebration of Poetry with a Beat
Edited by Nikki Giovanni
Sourcebooks Jabberwocky
2008
Reviewer: Tari

I wish Hip Hop Speaks to Children: A Celebration of Poetry with a Beat had been around when I was in elementary school. For most of my life I had a blind spot when it came to poetry, because nobody, not even a teacher or a librarian, introduced me to good poetry. If I had been introduced to poetry through Hip Hop Speaks to Children as a child, I know I would have been made a poetry lover much earlier in life.

Hip Hop Speaks to Children is an amazing collection of more than 50 poems and songs by poets and artists like Jacqueline Woodson, Gwendolyn Brooks, A Tribe Called Quest, Gary Soto, Kanye West, Langston Hughes, Queen Latifah, Mos Def, Charles R. Smith Jr., Maya Angelou, Walter Dean Myers, Lauryn Hill, James Berry, and W.E.B. Du Bois. These poems and songs with great rhythm come with an introduction by the book's editor, Nikki Giovanni - an introduction that really opened my eyes to the history and significance of hip hop.

It's not just the literature in the book that has fine beats. The book design, from the different fonts to the different layouts, and the illustrations by Kristen Balouch, Michele Noiset, Jeremy Tugeau, Alicia Vergel de Dios, Damian Ward, and Caroline Wolf are all fresh, colorful, and alive. The book also comes with an audio CD of more than 30 performances of the poems and songs.

I highly recommend this book, especially for children who are reluctant poetry readers. (I should know, I used to be one of them!) Hip Hop Speaks to Children makes poetry fun, incredibly accessible, and meaningful to children.

Link love: Doret's review at TheHappyNappyBookseller

Tarie is a reader, graduate student, editor, and English teacher in the Philippines. She blogs about literature for the young and young at heart at Into the Wardrobe and Asia in The Heart, World On The Mind.

Moribito: Guardian of the Spirit
Nahoko Uehashi
Translated into English by Cathy Hirano
Winner of the 2009 Batchelder Award

Moribito: Guardian of the Spirit, the first part of a ten-book Japanese fantasy series, introduces readers to the interconnected worlds of Sagu and Nayugu. Sagu is the visible world of humans and Nayugu is the invisible world of creatures like Juchi Ro Gai (the Mud Dwellers) and Yona Ro Gai (the Water Dwellers).

Nyunga Ro Im is the Water Spirit from Nayugu that causes rain in both worlds. Once every hundred years, Nyunga Ro Im lays an egg and dies. The egg hatches to become the new Water Spirit and controls the weather of the worlds. If the egg is destroyed, Sagu and Nayugu will suffer from a deadly drought. For mysterious reasons, Nyunga Ro Im always lays its egg inside one of the To Ro Gai (the Land Dwellers of Sagu) - a human. That human is known as the Moribito, the Guardian of the Spirit.

In this fast-paced, action-packed epic, the Moribito is Prince Chagum, the second son of the Mikado, the ruler of a country known as New Yogo. This is Chagum's tale. He struggles to accept his fate as the Guardian of the Spirit. And he must survive Rarunga the Egg Eater, a horrible creature of Nayugu who can visit Sagu in order to hunt Chagum. Chagum must also survive being hunted by his own father, who believes he has been possessed by a water demon.

This is also Balsa's tale. Balsa is Chagum's brave bodyguard. She is strong in body and spirit, an expert in the martial arts and a master of the short spear. An amazing female character with an interesting life story!

The first thing I noticed about Moribito: Guardian of the Spirit is the beautiful bookmaking. The text is a delightful dark blue. And there are great illustrations for the cover and inside the book.

I was actually astonished by how good the writing is. The descriptions in the book are so vivid that every action, every scene, every thought and feeling from a character, and every pearl of wisdom is crystal clear. I dare say that the writing and translation for Moribito is so good, and it stirred my imagination so much, that the book is almost better than if the story had been presented to us as a movie!

Aside from the exciting story and excellent writing, I enjoyed Moribito because it was refreshing to read Japanese fantasy. And I enjoyed getting a fantastical view of Japanese culture and lifestyle in the Middle Ages.

As a great lover of children's and young adult literature, fantasy, and all things Japanese, I found Moribito: Guardian of the Spirit so good that it is exhilarating.
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Tarie is a reader, graduate student, editor, and English teacher in the Philippines. She blogs about literature for the young and young at heart at Into the Wardrobe.

The Fold
An Na
Putnam Juvenile
2008

Joyce stepped back to the mirror and pulled out two sheets of tissue from the dispenser on the counter. She leaned forward, raising her tissue-swathed index fingers to her face. The huge zit pulsed with pain, but she held her breath and gave it. One. Last. Push. Eye-rolling, teeth-clenching, nausea-inducing, searing pain flooded her body, but in the mirror, Joyce could see the beginnings of a white nugget like a tiny grain of rice oozing out from under her skin along with pus-streaked blood. Joyce gasped and watched with revolt and glee as the alien seed emerged from the mother ship that was her temple. She got it.

That is part of the perfect beginning to a novel about the different images of beauty and society's preoccupation with them. We are introduced to Korean American Joyce Park through an opening chapter where she is obsessing over a zit because she wants to look her best when she asks her very popular and very hot crush to sign her yearbook.

Joyce is always compared to her beautiful, sexy, intelligent, and overachieving older sister Helen. Living in Helen's shadow makes Joyce angry at her sister and insecure about her own looks and abilities. Joyce's aunt, Gomo, is obsessed with looks. Gomo has gone through so much plastic surgery that Joyce and her younger brother Andy call her "Michael" (after the singer who has altered his appearance beyond recognition). When Gomo wins the lottery, she gives her family gifts that will help them improve their looks. She gives Helen an expensive and gorgeous traditional Korean outfit. She gives Andy shark liver extract pills with a special Chinese root for growing taller. Joyce's father gets a sharp new suit and shoes with lifts in them to make him look taller. Joyce's mother gets permanent makeup tattoos. Gomo offers Joyce free plastic surgery: blepharoplasty, the eyelid surgery that many Asians undergo to give their eyes folds.

Gomo's plastic surgeon, Dr. Reiner, glues back part of Joyce's eyelids to create the effect of the double eyelid fold surgery. This is temporary and is meant to help Joyce decide whether she will go through with the operation. Joyce feels prettier and more confident while trying "the fold" on a trial basis. Maybe with the permanent fold she will have a chance with her infatuation, the half-German, half-Korean, all-American John Ford Kang!

The Fold does not bang us over the head with its commentary on the different notions of and attitudes towards beauty. Neither does it force-feed us ideas about whether plastic surgey is right or wrong - or even about whether a preoccupation with looks is right or wrong! (Though it does come dangerously close to doing those things a couple of times.) The different notions of and attitudes towards beauty are embedded in the story and gently explored.

In addition, I was truly fascinated by the beauty of the Korean/Korean American culture shown in The Fold. Best of all, by the end of the novel I was teary-eyed because I realized that it is also about the beauty of family.

I would love to discuss this book with high school girls. It is the perfect novel to use to encourage teenagers to think carefully about their physical insecurities. It is also the perfect novel to use to encourage teenagers to think carefully about Western and Eastern standards of beauty and how the media defines and portrays beauty.

As an Asian, I know several other Asians who think that their eyes are ugly because they have no eyelid folds. I never did understand why they do not like their eyes. :( I like their eyes just the way they are! In fact, I think the absence of the fold is BEAUTIFUL.
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Tarie is a reader, grad student (major Anglo-American literature), editor of EFL instructional materials, and former (and future) English teacher in the Philippines. She blogs about literature for the young and young at heart at Into the Wardrobe.

The Year of the Rat
Grace Lin
Little Brown
2008
Ages 8-12

The Year of the Rat, a semi-autobiographical novel written and illustrated by Grace Lin, follows a year (one Chinese New Year to the next) in the life of Pacy, a young Taiwanese American. The Year of the Rat is the first year of the Chinese twelve-year cycle and therefore it symbolizes new beginnings. The Year of the Rat is the time to make a fresh start and to change things. And Pacy does experience important changes during the Year of the Rat: her best friend Melody moves away, there's a new boy who is the only other Asian in her elementary school (aside from her sister Ki-Ki), her favorite cousin Clifford gets married, and she starts doubting her dream to become a writer and illustrator. Pacy does not like most of the changes the year brings.


I found The Year of the Rat a refreshing read because it is simple, innocent, and unpretentious (though at times it is corny); and because it is children's literature I can really relate to.

As an Asian who grew up in the United States, I could relate to Pacy's confusion and the prejudice she encounters. I kept getting flashbacks while reading The Year of the Rat. For example, Pacy remembers that in kindergarten her classmates Kurt and Rich would stretch their eyes with their fingers and chant pretend Chinese at her. That's happened to me - and I'm not even Chinese! Pacy says: "Sometimes, I felt like I was more than one person. At home, everyone called me Pacy, my Chinese name, and at school, everyone called me Grace, my American name. At times I wasn't sure which person I was supposed to be-Taiwanese Pacy or Chinese Pacy or American Grace." I've certainly felt that way before!

I've always thought that Asian cultures are beautiful and I LOVED learning so many things about Taiwanese and Taiwanese American culture from The Year of the Rat. But the work is not about Taiwanese or Taiwanese American culture, neither is it about immigrant experiences. These things are gently weaved into an engrossing story that is really about family, friendship, and growing up.

I was a little sad when I finished reading The Year of the Rat. It's a short novel (with cute illustrations!) that I didn't want to end. I want more stories about Pacy and her family and friends!
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Tarie is a reader, grad student (major Anglo-American literature), editor of EFL instructional materials, and former (and future) English teacher in the Philippines. She blogs about literature for the young and young at heart at Into the Wardrobe.