TAI CHI MORNING

In 1988, poet Grimes was part of an artists’ tour of China, performing, reading, traveling, and teaching.

Young, whose family comes from China, always sketches what he sees when he returns to visit. Grimes constructs a travelogue of small poems, each with an introduction accompanied by her tourist photos. Young’s lively and evocative black-and-white drawings, which are from the same time period—just before Tiananmen Square—are well-matched with the verse, some rhymed, some not. What could have been a mishmash turns out pretty well, as Grimes writes about her homesick longing for ice cream: “Sweet Deal,” her inability to consume scorpion sauté in “Dinner Guest” and wonderful sights, like the Great Wall and the Yellow Mountains.

While it might be hard to find an audience for this, it opens up possibilities for history, culture, and poetry classes for middle grades.