Looking for a lovely calendar for 2012? Be sure to check out award winning author/illustrator Grace Lin‘s Red Threads Calendar, the sales of which will go to assist orphans in China.

Grace Lin is the author and illustrator of picture books, early readers and middle grade novels. Her book Where the Mountain Meets the Moon was a huge success and won many awards including the prestigious Newbery Honor.  It was chosen as one of seven books in our Spirit of Paper Tigers Book Set and Grace was one of our nominations for the  2011 Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award. Don’t miss our interview with Grace or her two Gallery features here and here.

The winners of the 2011 Growing Up Asian in America art and essay contest have been announced!

The largest program in the USA to celebrate Asian heritage, Growing Up Asian in America is a signature program of the Asian Pacific Fund and provides a unique forum for youth in grade K to 12 to celebrate being both Asian and American and to express this through creative writing and art. The program is also an important community re source, helping people better understand the experiences of young Asian Americans and learn more about life in a place as diverse as the San Francisco Bay Area.

Each year more than 1,000 Bay Area students compete for prizes totaling $27,000. A new theme is selected each year and for 2011 is “Lost and Found”. Organizers note:

Our hunch was that children and youth of all ages experience loss and discovery throughout their young lives and might not find opportunities to reflect on those changes.

Local Bay Area libraries are hosting exhibits that display the winning entries and honorable mentions of the Bay Area students from now until February, 2012. There you can see Hyejin Ahn’s winning art, “Never Be Lost Again,” a film strip image of war and goodbyes.  Grace Wang’s essay that suggests to her good friend who is adopted that maybe her [birth] mother might have accidentally lost her.  How Payal Ahuja felt lost when she first came to America at age eight; she missed her family and friends in India. Then she found that her library in Mountain View was “a constant source of joy.” Through our 2011 program we learn that loss and discovery are an important part of our experience, especially for those who have traveled thousands of miles to become American.

The exhibit schedule can be found here and is a must see for adults and children! You will be amazed at the insight, creativity, wisdom and talent of these students! One of my favorite winning entries in the art category is pictured above. The image is by Aniketh Umesh, winner in the K-5 art category, and is titled “Lost Out: On Good Times With Grandpa In India; Found: Land Of Opportunity In The United States”.

It’s an exciting week for author Grace Lin and all her fans! She will be launching her book Thanking the Moon at the Museum of Chinese in America (MOCA)’s Mid-Autumn Moon Family Festival this coming Saturday.

Here are the details:

Mooncakes, lanterns and the Jade Rabbit in the moon! Join MOCA for a day-long series of activities in celebration of the Mid-Autumn Moon Festival (中秋节), including storytellings, drop-in arts and crafts activities, gallery tours and lantern making workshops with special readings by Asian American children’s book authors Grace Lin and  Lenore Look.

WHEN: September 19th, 12pm reading and signing (other activities will be going on all day from 10-5)

WHERE: Museum of Chinese in America, 215 Centre Street, New York, NY, USA 10013

To celebrate Thanking the Moon, Grace will be writing a little series of Moon Festival posts on her blog all week. Make sure you drop in everyday–you won’t want to miss it!

I feel bit of a Johnny-Come-Lately introducing this wonderful young adult graphic novel called American Born Chinese by Gene Yang.   PaperTigers has already done a lot with this ground-breaking Asian American graphic novel; for example, you can see Yang’s work featured in the PT gallery.  But the book really only came to my attention through this blog called An Introduction to Comics by Paul Moffett.

When my son was younger, he sometimes requested a comic book for me to read to him at bedtime.   He developed an appetite for the form quite early.  Now, he reads to himself at night and he prefers graphic novels or comics.  I picked up American Born Chinese, more or less, hoping that he would read it on my recommendation.  But then, I got hooked!  And then my husband got hooked, too.   What I found compelling about Yang’s novel was its incorporation and intertwining of the Judeo-Christian story with the mythical one of the Monkey King.  While the Monkey King struggles with his identity as a monkey, so too, does the boy Jin Wang struggle with his identity as Chinese American.  Although at first these stories seem unconnected, they join up at the end in an unusually satisfying way.  Monkey King’s advice to Jin Wang?  — “You know, Jin, I would have saved myself from five hundred years’ imprisonment beneath a mountain of rock had I only realized how good it is to be a monkey.”

May is Asian Heritage Month or Asian Pacific American Heritage Month, and if there’s ONE book you might consider reading for it, I would recommend American Born Chinese.  It’s destined to become an Asian American classic.  Soon after my husband and I were finished with the book, I saw my son casually pick it up, peruse its pages, and carry it off to his bedroom for his own night-time reading.

Today is the official launch of Asian Heritage Month in Canada and a special celebration will be held at the Parliament Buildings in Ottawa. Parliamentarians, government officials, community leaders and the general public are invited to share in an evening celebration hosted by Citizenship and Immigration Canada, that will include welcoming remarks, several cultural performances and a reception.

For more information on Asian Heritage Month events being held throughout Canada click here.

Asian Heritage Month is also celebrated in May in the USA where it is known as Asian Pacific American Heritage Month. On May 1st,  the Smithsonian Museum, located in Washington, DC, is hosting their free kickoff celebration of Asian Pacific American Heritage Month.  Held in conjunction with the exhibition The Art of Gaman: Arts and Crafts from the Japanese American Internment Camps, 1942-1946 the day will include many events, a highlight of which will be tales from storyteller Anne Shimojima. Anne always receives rave reviews for the way she delights youth and adult audiences of all sizes with her graceful and spirited tellings of folktales from her Asian heritage!

If you’re looking for some great reads to take you through the month, take a look at this year’s winners and honor books of the Asian/Pacific American Awards for Literature. These awards, given by the Asian/Pacific American Librarians Association promote Asian/Pacific American culture and heritage based on literary and artistic merit. Bear these books in mind for any time of the year!

For a full calendar of Asian Pacific American Heritage Month events happening across the USA click here.

PaperTigers is always happy to help spread the word on multicultural children’s and young adult literature events. If there is an event happening in your neighbourhood that you think would be of interest to our readers, send an email to corinne(at)papertigers(dot)org and we’ll post it on the blog. Here’s what promises to be a great event sent to us by Anjali Goyal, board member on The South Asian Women’s Creative Collective (SAWCC):

Beyond Gossip Girls: An Evening with Young Adult Authors Neesha Meminger and Sheba Karim

Books and films for young adults have exploded onto the scene recently with the success of the Twilight series, Gossip Girl, Harry Potter, and The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants. How do teens of color fare amidst this explosion? What is it like to try to publish works with multicultural characters or characters of color in an industry clamoring for the next Twilight?

Join us for a reading and discussion with young adult novelists Neesha Meminger (author of Shine, Coconut Moon) and Sheba Karim (author of Skunk Girl). Meminger and Karim deal with issues ranging from the Sikh experience post 9/11 and single parenthood to body image and Muslim American identity, while providing cohesive narratives of South Asian American adolescences and their growing pains. Both authors will read from their new novels and discuss their different paths to publication and writing for a teen audience. Booksigning and reception to follow.

Wednesday, July 29 at 7pm

The Asian American Writers’ Workshop
16 West 32nd Street, 10th Floor
New York, New York

Celebrations are in full-swing for Asian Heritage Month which is celebrated in both Canada and the USA during the month of May. This is a time to honor the legacy of generations of Asian Canadians and Asian Americans who have enriched their country’s history and are instrumental in its future success. It is a time to participate in festivities that celebrate the many achievements and contributions of Asians who, throughout history, have done so much to make Canada and the USA the culturally diverse, compassionate and prosperous nations we know today.

As part of their celebrations for Asian American Heritage Month, the Asian/Pacific American Librarians Association announced the winner and honor books in the 2009 Asian/Pacific American Awards for Literature. These awards promote Asian/Pacific American culture and heritage based on literary and artistic merit, and our congratulations go out to Wabi Sabi, written by Mark Reibstein and illustrated by Ed Young, which won the picture book award. Back in 2008, PaperTiger bloggers Marj and Aline were thrilled to see the proofs for Wabi Sabi at the Bologna Children’s Book Fair and Marj posted a great review of Wabi Sabi here.

Winners have also been announced in the Growing Up Asian in America Art and Essay contest, which is open to students in grades K – 12 who reside in the San Francisco Bay Area. This year’s theme was “Change- If you could change one thing to make the world a better place, what would that be?”. I was especially drawn to Claire Dworsky’s essay entitled Change Your Assumptions, in which she wrote:

To me, growing up Asian is the same as any kid most of the time. I go to school, gymnastics, soccer, play with my dog, play outside – normal stuff.

But sometimes other people say things that make me feel sad or different. They make fun of my eyes and call me Chinese. They yell, “Hey Chinois!” They ask questions that aren’t really questions, like “Are you really adopted?” I say “Yes I was adopted from Kayakhstan, a country between Russia and China. I can show you on a map if you want.” But they’re really using these questions to make fun of me. And it’s even worse. When Asian girls pick on me by saying “Oh, you have blue eyes you think you are all that.” Racism is hurtful, no matter who says it.

Claire concludes her essay with a powerful statement that all of us, young and old, should take to heart: “When you know how it feels to be discriminated against you should use that feeling to imagine how others feel, and change yourself so you can help others.” The winning entries of the Growing Up Asian in America contest will be on exhibit at several locations throughout the Bay Area until February 2010. Click here to see the schedule.

Little Brother has just come home from school with a sunflower seedling, which he is certain will grow into an enormous flower… fingers crossed. In the meantime, it seemed the perfect opportunity to pull out the special story of Me and Mr. Mah by Andrea Spalding and beautifully illustrated by Janet Wilson (you can see some of the illustrations in the PaperTigers Gallery).

Set in Canada, this is the story of a young boy, Ian, whose world is turned upside down by his parents’ separation. He has moved with his mother to a city and his new, temporary home has nothing growing in the backyard – but there is a gap in the fence, and through it he catches a glimpse of a thriving vegetable garden. The owner of the garden, the elderly Mr Mah, has spotted him too and pushes some sunflower seeds through for Ian to plant. Gradually they become friends. They garden together, they share stories and they show each other their special boxes: Ian’s filled with sweet-smelling straw and the toy tractor just like his father’s; Mr Mah’s a beautiful Chinese lacquer box containing special memories from his much longer past. The sunflowers grow and Ian gathers seeds to take to his new home: he’s about to move again. Why, then, does he come across Mr Mah’s special box in a secondhand store some time afterwards?

This is a heart-warming story about friendship across generations, with a tiny reminder of the importance of keeping promises. Ian had become so caught up with new friends and activities once he’d settled into his permanent home, that he’d let his promise to visit Mr Mah slip. Fortunately, Mr Mah is all right but Ian gets enough of a fright not to take their friendship for granted ever again.

And one part of the story resonates particularly at this time, when we celebrate Asian Pacific Heritage Month:

“Once Mr Mah and I went for a walk through the Chinese cemetery. He told me there used to be a bone house, where the long-dead Chinese waited for their families to raise the money to send their bones back to China.
“Do they do that now?” I asked.
Mr Mah shook his head. “No. We are Canadian. We stay here.”

The new issue of PaperTigers features many books that focus on Asian Pacific Heritage Month and it would be great to hear if there are any you would recommend for reading aloud to young children too.

This year’s winners of the Growing Up Asian in America essay and art competition have been announced. Check them out. You are in for a thought-provoking treat.

Growing Up Asian in America, the largest celebration of Asian heritage in the United States, with prizes totaling $27,000, is a signature program of the Asian Pacific Fund. Created to promote understanding throughout the Bay Area among people of all backgrounds, the Asian Pacific Fund encourages K-12 student to express their ideas through creative writing and art.

With the Beijing Summer Olympics coming up, this year’s theme, “Winning and Losing” is very timely. Here are some words from the organizers about what inspired it an what sort of responses they got to it:

It is a widely-held stereotype that Asian parents expect their children to excel in school, and we wanted to know how common this expectation for excellence actually is. How does competition and teamwork fit into students’ drive to succeed?

The students who participated in the contest (over 1,000 entries were received this year) shared with us dilemmas they have faced and the difficult lessons they learned about sportsmanship, failure, humility and excellence. From the entries that emerged, it seems like Asian youth feel enormous pressure from their parents to excel, not just in school but in other areas too. Yet we also found quite a range of responses to that pressure. For example, many students felt regret about doing especially well when it meant a good friend would lose, and others unexpectedly found new friends when they cooperated with teammates and opponents. Competition in sports was often a relief from academic pressures, and many students enjoyed sports precisely because they could try their best without feeling like they always had to win.

We hope these essays and artwork will help our diverse communities to develop an understanding of how young people come to terms with how they compete against and work with one another.

Between May and December 2008, the winning entries will be featured in community exhibits at various Bay Area public libraries and seen by over one million people. So keep your eyes peeled and don’t miss the opportunity, if you are in or near the area.

Calling student artists and writers (K-12) in the San Francisco Bay area! You have until March 6th to get your entries in for the Growing Up Asian in America competition! This year’s theme is:

Winning and Losing, Competition and Teamwork

and you can enter either or both of the categories – Art and Essay or Poem.

The prizes are awarded by the Asian Pacific Fund and are worth an enormous $27,000!

From the Competition’s Press Release:

Growing Up Asian in America encourages young people to creatively express their ideas on identity and culture. Students of all backgrounds are invited to submit entries, including Chinese, Filipino, Indian, Japanese, Korean, Thai, Vietnamese, other Asians and Pacific Islanders, and students of mixed heritage.