Andrea Cheng, illustrated by Nicole Wong, photographs by Tessa Macintosh,
Only One Year
Lee and Low Books, 2010.

Ages 7-10

In many cultures grandparents and other relatives are responsible for raising children who, for one reason or another, can’t be with their own parents. With the chapter book Only One Year award-winning author Andrea Cheng tells of a Chinese American family that sends their two year-old to live with relatives in China for a year because their jobs don’t allow them to care for him properly.

Sharon, soon to be a fourth grader, tells the story. Her father is an architect and her mother is beginning a job at a nearby junior high school. Sharon and her sister Mary, who is going into first grade, are shocked when their parents share their decision to send their little brother to spend the coming year with their grandparents in China. Mary and Sharon are every kind of annoyed: resentful, indignant, sorrowful, mystified. But sure enough, one day they all go to the airport to see Di Di and their mother off to China. Mother will be home soon, but it will be summer again before their brother returns.

The girls’ grandparents in China don’t have a computer (one is offered; they refuse it) but they send photographs regularly. Gradually the girls become absorbed with their own lives and friends. They build an elaborate doll house together and miss Di Di less intensely. They understand, sort of, that their parents are too busy to take care of him properly since their mother is working, and that when he returns he’ll be old enough for pre-school. “Di Di is only two,” their mother has explained. “We cannot leave him with a stranger.” Furthermore, “A babysitter is not like Nai Nai. For a babysitter, Di Di is a job. But for Nai Nai, he is a grandson.” And he’ll learn Chinese, she reminded the girls, “just like you did when you went to China. Remember?” But all Sharon can remember of China are photos in an album.

The adjustments when Di Di returns a year later are even more difficult, as it turns out, but again, gradually this close-knit family adjusts. Only One Year will likely appeal more to girls than to boys, but all young readers will enjoy this sweet family story while learning that parents have many different ways of expressing love and caring for their children.

Charlotte Richardson
June 2010