Inspiring and delicious.
Leung and Iwai offer an account of the woman who changed the way Americans regard Chinese cuisine.
The seventh daughter in a wealthy Beijing family, Cecilia Chang (1920-2020) loved peering into the kitchen to watch the chefs preparing pork dumplings and sweet soup. At dinner each night, her father drew the family’s attention to subtleties of the meals—words that Cecilia eagerly drank in. When Japan invaded Beijing (and then the rest of the country) in 1937, Cecilia left the city, embarking on a harrowing wartime journey that took her throughout China as she learned about each region’s culinary specialties. In 1949, after civil war broke out, Cecilia escaped to Tokyo and then settled in San Francisco. She was disappointed by the Chinese food in restaurants, which was often cheap and greasy. “Chinese food is not just chop suey,” she complained. In 1961, she opened her own restaurant, the Mandarin, which boasted a menu of over 200 dishes that highlighted flavors from all over China. The Mandarin soon became a fine-dining destination that redefined Americans’ perceptions of Chinese food. Iwai’s muted watercolor-and-ink artwork relies on a mixture of vignettes and full- and half-page spreads to capture the details of Cecilia’s trek. Close-ups of the various dishes paired with sumptuous descriptions, along with maps of the regions where they originated, emphasize the richness of Chinese cuisine. (This review has been updated for factual accuracy.)
Inspiring and delicious. (author’s note, photos) (Picture-book biography. 5-10)Pub Date: April 29, 2025
ISBN: 9780759557413
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Feb. 15, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A unique angle on a watershed moment in the civil rights era.
The New Orleans school child who famously broke the color line in 1960 while surrounded by federal marshals describes the early days of her experience from a 6-year-old’s perspective.
Bridges told her tale to younger children in 2009’s Ruby Bridges Goes to School, but here the sensibility is more personal, and the sometimes-shocking historical photos have been replaced by uplifting painted scenes. “I didn’t find out what being ‘the first’ really meant until the day I arrived at this new school,” she writes. Unfrightened by the crowd of “screaming white people” that greets her at the school’s door (she thinks it’s like Mardi Gras) but surprised to find herself the only child in her classroom, and even the entire building, she gradually realizes the significance of her act as (in Smith’s illustration) she compares a small personal photo to the all-White class photos posted on a bulletin board and sees the difference. As she reflects on her new understanding, symbolic scenes first depict other dark-skinned children marching into classes in her wake to friendly greetings from lighter-skinned classmates (“School is just school,” she sensibly concludes, “and kids are just kids”) and finally an image of the bright-eyed icon posed next to a soaring bridge of reconciliation. (This book was reviewed digitally.)
A unique angle on a watershed moment in the civil rights era. (author and illustrator notes, glossary) (Autobiographical picture book. 6-8)Pub Date: Sept. 6, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-338-75388-2
Page Count: 48
Publisher: Orchard/Scholastic
Review Posted Online: June 21, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2022
PERSPECTIVES
Blandly inspirational fare made to evoke equally shrink-wrapped responses.
An NBA star pays tribute to the influence of his grandfather.
In the same vein as his Long Shot (2009), illustrated by Frank Morrison, this latest from Paul prioritizes values and character: “My granddad Papa Chilly had dreams that came true,” he writes, “so maybe if I listen and watch him, / mine will too.” So it is that the wide-eyed Black child in the simply drawn illustrations rises early to get to the playground hoops before anyone else, watches his elder working hard and respecting others, hears him cheering along with the rest of the family from the stands during games, and recalls in a prose afterword that his grandfather wasn’t one to lecture but taught by example. Paul mentions in both the text and the backmatter that Papa Chilly was the first African American to own a service station in North Carolina (his presumed dream) but not that he was killed in a robbery, which has the effect of keeping the overall tone positive and the instructional content one-dimensional. Figures in the pictures are mostly dark-skinned. (This book was reviewed digitally.)
Blandly inspirational fare made to evoke equally shrink-wrapped responses. (Picture book. 6-8)Pub Date: Jan. 10, 2023
ISBN: 978-1-250-81003-8
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Roaring Brook Press
Review Posted Online: Sept. 27, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2022
BOOK REVIEW
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