When I read Andrea Cheng's The Year of the Book almost two years ago, I had no clue it would turn out to be a series! Such staying power bodes well that later printings of Book have been fully corrected; click on The Year of the Book post for...
Absolute details surrounding the life of Dave the Potter are limited and uncertain. What remains of his life story almost two centuries later, is scattered with uncertain words, including 'sometime,' 'about,' 'believed to be,' 'might,' 'possibly,' and other such noncommittal qualifiers. The few surviving documents...
Fourth-grader Anna Wang is going through those tortuous tween years. Her longtime best friend Laura is busy chasing after Abigail and Lucy who have more social clout. She's uncomfortable admitting to friends that her mother cleans homes in "one of those high rises ...
Sisters Sharon and Mary are shocked when their mother tells them that their two-year-old younger brother, Di Di, will be sent to China to live for a year with their grandparents. "'A whole year?'" they ask incredulously. Mama explains that the girls are older, heading...
Through a collection of sparse free verse, Cheng captures a family in crisis. Ann, not yet 15, can't tell her friends that her mother just lost her breasts to cancer. But everyone seems to know already, asking after her mother and bringing chili with beans...
A most heartwarming story of an 80-year-old woman who remembers the simple joys of her own youth with her two younger sisters, while watching three little girls enjoy a perfect snowy day.
Reviews: "In Celebration of...
As eleven-year-old Xiao Mei’s is about to embark on a trip to Shanghai to visit extended family, her beloved grandmother tells her, “You are my messenger. Look everything. Remember.” As a Chinese American hapa,...
Asian American-by-marriage, Andrea Cheng explores her Hungarian roots in this poignant story about 12-year-old Juli, whose mother decides Juli must have a most magnificent lace tablecloth as her marriage dowry. Juli, who...
Told in the alternating voices of two Chinese American girls – American-born Sarah and recently arrived Ting – Cheng captures the story of an unlikely friendship. While Sarah and Ting, both fourth graders, may...
A young Chinese American boy is saddened when his beloved grandmother moves to San Francisco to live with her doctor daughter, who is better able to care for her. She leaves behind a collection...
A touching story about a young girl who builds her grandmother a small goldfish pond surrounded by chrysanthemums, in response to a letter from China announcing that the grandmother’s childhood home has...
