A Sweet New Year for Ren

written by Michelle Sterling; illustrated by Dung Ho

Ren jumps out of bed, ready for a busy day in preparation for Lunar New Year. She wonders if she is old enough this year to help her family make the special foods or decorations for the festivities. She asks to join family members in their tasks – Baba with decorations, Mama and Uncle Jian with the dumplings and Auntie Weili with the noodles. It’s not going to happen this year, because she’s too small. But, things change when her brother, Charlie, enters the home. He patiently shows her how to make the traditional pineapple cakes, rolling, patting baking and sometimes, cleaning up a little mess. The cakes turn out beautifully and are part of a wonderful family Lunar New Year celebration. At the end, there is a recipe for those special pineapple cakes. Yum!

Bright cartoon-like illustrations accompany simple text in this wonderful book about an event that is culturally significant to many people around the world. An author’s note discusses the holiday and her connection to it, while the recipe at the end of the book is an invitation to join the festivities. Highly recommended for those libraries looking to increase their diverse literature selection.

Outrun the Moon

Outrun the Moon has so much to recommend it: Historic fiction, a Chinese-American school girl living in Chinatown overcoming all odds to attend a prestigious all white girls’ school, and the action and adventure of the 1906 San Francisco earthquake.

Readers will cheer at the spunk of the main character, Mercy, who has ambition and wants to be an entrepreneur.  We cheer as she literally bribes/blackmails/connives her way into the school, in part by deceiving them that she is a Chinese heiress (although she was born in California and has never been to China). The reader fumes at the racism and how the Chinese are treated. And the reader roots for Mercy as she helps her fellow students, and others, survive on the day of the catastrophic earthquake and fire, and in the days following.