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Reviews from the Asian Review of Books, Hong
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Sherri L. Smith,
Hot, Sour, Salty, Sweet
Delacorte Press Books For Young Readers, 2008.
- "It's like Chinese cooking. All our differences are like different flavours. Some are hot like these chilies, or sour like vinegar, or salty like dried shrimp, or sweet like melon. They're all so different from each other, but take a bite of one of those dumplings dipped in vinegar and soy sauce, and it's delicious, Ana. It's perfect."
Okay, this is definitely a book for under-15 girls. The voice is all, like, y'know… dork… girlish churlishness, and blonde means enemy. Still, it is a story about a bi-racial under-15 girl, with African American grandparents (surnamed White) from Louisiana, a Nai Nai ("that means `father's mother' in Mandarin") and a Ye Ye who is allegedly so old he is "like the History Channel or something".
Ana's a freshly-minted junior-high school graduate; the school's water main erupted into a three-story geyser through the gymnasium roof just as she was about to give the salutatorian address and now her graduation dress has been ruined by the purple dye from the cheap polyester graduation robes students had to wear. She has her sights set on dreamy Jamie Tabata -- but so does the enemy. The graduation dance has just been cancelled. And Ana's best friend Chelsea has just invited Jamie and his family over to Ana's house for dinner!! That's the kind of story this is. A farce. Reading lite. And a puppy-love story to boot.
This is what I thought, at first.
But, you know how it goes. Sometimes you find a book so well written that it takes you somewhere you never thought it was going to go, and by the end of last page you are -- metaphorically speaking -- almost picking your jaw off the floor. You are grateful that you withheld judgment (or, at least, did not act on it) and continued to read, and realize that if you hadn't done so the loss would be yours.
Hot, Sour, Salty, Sweet is not about wacky schoolhouse mayhem. It's not a farce (although it could make a great stage play, I think). It's about a day in the life of a biracial family -- the day a 15-year-old girl discovers that she is, as her mother puts it, "the best of both of us." And that life, which -- as her father puts it -- can be so hot and sour and salty at times, can also be sweet, and delicious. And, for an under-15-year old girl with the whole summer ahead of her... perfect.
I'm going to track down one of Sherri L. Smith's previous books. Maybe the one that won the ALA Best Book for Young Adults, or the Bank Street College Best Children's Book of the Year, or...
Karmel Schreyer
25 June 2008
Karmel Schreyer writes educational materials for Asian children and is the author of the young-adult novels, Naomi: The Strawberry Blonde of Pippu Town and A Singing Bird Will Come: Naomi in Hong Kong. |
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