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TEN BLOCKS TO THE BIG WOK

Name: TEN BLOCKS TO THE BIG WOK
Author: Ying-Hwa Hu
ISBN: 978-1-64379-068-8

A CHINATOWN COUNTING BOOK

by Ying-Hwa Hu ; illustrated by Ying-Hwa Hu ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 25, 2022

Standard Chinatown fare with an appealing concept-book structure.

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Mia and her Uncle Eddie go for a walk through Chinatown, counting along the way.

The pair, who are presumably Chinese American, depart home for The Big Wok, a dim sum restaurant 10 blocks away. En route, they take in the scenery, noticing details that appear in quantities corresponding to the block number. There is one giant panda ride on the first block, two stone lions on the second, three toy turtles outside a shop on the third, and so on. Each block is depicted on its own double-page spread, with only a sentence or two naming the items and the block number (the backmatter provides more details about each item). Vibrant but not overly saturated colors give the journey a cheerfulness that is mirrored in Mia’s bright smile—her delight is infectious. At the restaurant, the duo place an order, requesting food items in numbers counting backward: 10 soup dumplings, nine fried wontons, eight shumai, and so forth. Everything they’ve ordered is pictured in a mouthwatering spread, and a page turn reveals a small surprise for the last item. The English text is translated in full into Simplified Chinese, though both fonts are unusually small. The numerals are shown in the bottom corner of each page, but they are inconspicuous and could easily be missed. A chart in the backmatter includes all the written forms and bilingual pronunciations for the numbers one through 10. (This book was reviewed digitally.)

Standard Chinatown fare with an appealing concept-book structure. (author’s note) (Picture book. 3-7)

Pub Date: Jan. 25, 2022

ISBN: 978-1-64379-068-8

Page Count: 40

Publisher: Children's Book Press

Review Posted Online: Dec. 2, 2021

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2021

Categories:

CHILDREN'S CONCEPTS | CHILDREN'S FAMILY

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by Mo Yan ; adapted by Guan Xiaoxiao ; translated by Ying-Hwa Hu ; illustrated by Zhu Chengliang

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AMERICAN SLAVE, AMERICAN HERO
by Laurence Pringle & illustrated by Cornelius Van Wright & Ying-Hwa Hu

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CARPENTER'S HELPER

by Sybil Rosen ; illustrated by Camille Garoche ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 16, 2021

Renata’s wren encounter proves magical, one most children could only wish to experience outside of this lovely story.

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A home-renovation project is interrupted by a family of wrens, allowing a young girl an up-close glimpse of nature.

Renata and her father enjoy working on upgrading their bathroom, installing a clawfoot bathtub, and cutting a space for a new window. One warm night, after Papi leaves the window space open, two wrens begin making a nest in the bathroom. Rather than seeing it as an unfortunate delay of their project, Renata and Papi decide to let the avian carpenters continue their work. Renata witnesses the birth of four chicks as their rosy eggs split open “like coats that are suddenly too small.” Renata finds at a crucial moment that she can help the chicks learn to fly, even with the bittersweet knowledge that it will only hasten their exits from her life. Rosen uses lively language and well-chosen details to move the story of the baby birds forward. The text suggests the strong bond built by this Afro-Latinx father and daughter with their ongoing project without needing to point it out explicitly, a light touch in a picture book full of delicate, well-drawn moments and precise wording. Garoche’s drawings are impressively detailed, from the nest’s many small bits to the developing first feathers on the chicks and the wall smudges and exposed wiring of the renovation. (This book was reviewed digitally with 10-by-20-inch double-page spreads viewed at actual size.)

Renata’s wren encounter proves magical, one most children could only wish to experience outside of this lovely story. (Picture book. 3-7)

Pub Date: March 16, 2021

ISBN: 978-0-593-12320-1

Page Count: 40

Publisher: Schwartz & Wade/Random

Review Posted Online: Jan. 12, 2021

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2021

Categories:

CHILDREN'S ANIMALS | CHILDREN'S SOCIAL THEMES | CHILDREN'S FAMILY

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ON THE FIRST DAY OF KINDERGARTEN

by Tish Rabe ; illustrated by Laura Hughes ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 21, 2016

While this is a fairly bland treatment compared to Deborah Lee Rose and Carey Armstrong-Ellis’ The Twelve Days of...

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Rabe follows a young girl through her first 12 days of kindergarten in this book based on the familiar Christmas carol.

The typical firsts of school are here: riding the bus, making friends, sliding on the playground slide, counting, sorting shapes, laughing at lunch, painting, singing, reading, running, jumping rope, and going on a field trip. While the days are given ordinal numbers, the song skips the cardinal numbers in the verses, and the rhythm is sometimes off: “On the second day of kindergarten / I thought it was so cool / making lots of friends / and riding the bus to my school!” The narrator is a white brunette who wears either a tunic or a dress each day, making her pretty easy to differentiate from her classmates, a nice mix in terms of race; two students even sport glasses. The children in the ink, paint, and collage digital spreads show a variety of emotions, but most are happy to be at school, and the surroundings will be familiar to those who have made an orientation visit to their own schools.

While this is a fairly bland treatment compared to Deborah Lee Rose and Carey Armstrong-Ellis’ The Twelve Days of Kindergarten (2003), it basically gets the job done. (Picture book. 4-7)