Summer is drawing to a close here in Canada and I’ve just returned from a fabulous four-week holiday spent cruising British Columbia’s gorgeous Central and South Coasts. There are a lot of wonderful things about boating but one of my favorites is that a lot of time can be devoted to reading! The kids and I always bring along a big stack of library books, purchase a few books along the way and make the most of the free drop-off/trade-in shelves at most marinas. Needless to say we never run out of reading material!

One of the books I brought along this year was Donna Jo Napoli’s young adult novel Bound. Initially intrigued by the book’s cover, one month after reading it I am still entranced by the story! Set in a small village during China’s Ming period, Bound is a Chinese version of Cindrella. Reviewer Jennifer Mo says:

This is not your familiar, comfortable Cinderella story. There are no magic wands or pumpkin coaches, and happily ever after happens only in, well, fairy tales. Real life offers few of these sugar-spun fantasies, particularly for three unsupported women in a Ming dynasty Chinese village. Fourteen-year-old Xing Xing, her stepmother and her half-sister Wei Ping are each bound: socially, ideologically and financially. The physical, crippling binding of Wei Ping’s feet is a metaphor for an encompassing system of patriarchal privilege. But in another sense of the word, to be bound is also to be heading towards something — not so much a fate, as a rare and precious choice of fates.

Donna Jo Napoli writes for all ages, from picture books through young adult books (great reads for adults too!); and is the recipient of many book awards. Her writing ranges from contemporary fiction to fantasy to historical novels (my favorite!); and her books have been translated into over 13 languages. She also writes mathematics and science tales, as well as books geared toward helping deaf people learn to read. Several of her books are re-tellings of fairy tales: Hansel and Gretel in The Magic Circle, Rapunzel in Zel, Jack and the Beanstalk in Crazy Jack, Rumpelstiltskin in Spinners, and Beauty and the Beast in Beast, which Napoli sets in ancient Persia.

In a recent post, Janet talked about Mr George Baker, in which a child goes to school with someone from an older generation who, even if it isn’t articulated in the book, is courageously taking the plunge and overcoming the stigma attached to not knowing how to read and write. In the process he becomes an icon not just for other adults but for the children: Aline commented that her daughter was very struck by the notion of older people going to school when she had Jeremiah Learns to Read read to her.

When children see the adults in their lives reading, they are more likely to pick up a book for themselves. When adults and children learn together, the rewards can go far beyond the actual learning.

In Grandfather Counts by Andrea Cheng, illustrated by Ange Zhang (Lee & Low, 2000), which I included in my recent Personal View for our Literacy-themed update of PaperTigers, Helen’s grandfather comes to live with them in the US from China. Everyone has to adapt and language difficulties have to be overcome. Gong Gong (Grandfather) is clearly horrified that his grandchildren don’t speak Chinese and Helen is resentful that she has had to move out of her bedroom with its view of the train tracks at the back of the house. One evening Gong Gong joins Helen as she sits waiting for the trains to pass by. He counts each carriage/car as it goes by and soon they are sharing and learning how to count in each other’s language. Soon the ice is broken and that evening at supper, all three children start to show an interest in learning Chinese.

The story leaves young readers/listeners with a warm feeling that Helen and her Gong Gong will become close and each will continue to help the other to learn. This is by no means a preachy story but it does remind us of the difference it can make to a child’s desire to learn if they see adults around them who are doing the same thing. Helen and her brother and sister had tried attending Chinese Sunday School but had dropped out because the other children already knew much more than they did. However, because Gong Gong was willing to let Helen help him to learn English, she wanted to be able to communicate with him in his language too.

It’s a wonderful story, too, for children whose parents come from different cultures but who may be struggling with the notion of being bilingual; and because the story requires both the English and the Chinese to run alongside each other, it’s also a great way to introduce the beginnings of counting in Chinese to English speakers.

Ham and eggs, hugs and kisses, poetry and painting–there are some things that were always meant to be together. This is colorfully, exuberantly, and bilingually pointed out by Everyday Life by Tricia Morrissey and Ding Sang Mak, illustrated by a group of artists from Jinshan, China (ThingsAsian Press).

Following the four seasons through the activities and festivals of a Chinese year, this book is filled with short verses, each one written in English, Chinese characters, and romanized Chinese, complete with tone marks, so those of us who don’t speak Chinese can still attempt to give the music of its sounds a try. Dragons dance, pictures are “sewed into life,” kites swoop, trees are decorated with toys during the harvest festival, and winter is greeted with the Chicken Feather Game–while children “Pile Up a Snowman” with “brown mushroom ears, black olive eyes.”

Each of the joyful, rollicking verses is accompanied by a painting, done in vivid, gleaming colors and filled with people who are so vitally present that they almost seem in motion. Every picture draws the viewer into the scene and into the lives that leap straight from the page to imaginations. They have been created by folk artists, farmers who paint scenes from their daily lives in tempera mixed with chalk, whose work is now exhibited in a Shanghai gallery.

Through art and the use of English and Chinese, this is a book that shrinks global distances by bringing another culture close while introducing the youngest of children to the delight of rhyming, rhythmical words in two languages and the pleasure of exploring paintings. And what could be better than that, after eating a plate of ham and eggs and before receiving bedtime hugs and kisses?