Kimchi Mamas

Asian Pacific American Heritage Month Book Giveaway

In honor of Asian Pacific American Heritage Month, Hatchette Book Group is offering five lucky Kimchi Mamas readers FIVE books written by APAs. They are:

1.       Free Food for Millionaires By Min Jin Lee

2.       Trail of Crumbs By Kim Sunée 

3.       The Fortune Cookie Chronicles By Jennifer Lee

4.       Transparency By Frances Hwang

5.       Strangers from a Different Shore By Ronald Takaki

Awesome, right?

For a chance to win, leave a comment telling us about your favorite book by an APA author before May 31. One entry per person. Winners will be chosen randomly on June 1. Apologies to our international readers, but this contest is only open to US and Canadian residents.

Giving and Receiving

I've set lofty goals of trying to be done with holiday shopping this week.  I've done my duty, and done a decent amount of shopping in the last couple of days.  My favorite gifts for kids, however, are books.  I remember who gave me most of the books I've received as gifts.  The other things don't seem to stick around for as long, especially for kids.  Recently, as we've been going through my childhood book collection, it's always nice to see an inscription and a familiar name.

So, here are some of my favorite and most coveted Asian American books for this holiday season:

Wave, by Suzy Lee

This book is so simple, yet so joyful!  There are no words in this book, but the beautiful artwork creates a wonderful story that made my daughter smile.

Skim, by Mariko Tamaki, illustrated by Jillian Tamaki

I'm really into graphic novels recently, if only because they're about the only novels I can actually finish these days.  I think they're a perfect medium for conveying some of these coming of age type stories.  I hope this book lands under my tree this season.

The Milet Picture Dictionary

In my ongoing search for Korean children's books for my husband to read to my daughter, I came across The Milet Picture Dictionary on Amazon. It includes all the basic categories of vocabulary a beginning language-learner needs, like words for food, clothes, parts of the body and furniture. The art is brightly-colored and impressionistic, and each picture is labeled in English and hangul, so either of us can read it with her.

If you've come across any great Korean-language resources for kids, please pass them along.

--Weigook Saram

Sixteen Years In Sixteen Seconds

Now that the Olympics are officially here, it seems like the Olympics are everywhere - my daughter's class is even doing a unit on the Olympics and sports.  They made a little chart and each child got to put up a sticker next to their favorite sport; my daughter chose swimming and diving.

Paula Yoo's biography of Sammy Lee, "Sixteen Years in Sixteen Seconds" has been in high rotation recently.  Except that the book is a little long for an almost-four year old.  The story is pretty captivating though.  Sammy Lee, a young Korean American growing in in California during the 1940s can only go swimming one day a week when the swimming pools are open to "coloreds."  Even so, he becomes inspired to learn how to dive, and starts learning by jumping off a diving board into a sand pit.  Sammy, like a lot of us, struggles with his father's pressure to become a doctor and his love for diving.  Sammy dreams of being an Olympic champion, but faces many obstacles and personal challenges to get there.

I think that besides the length of the story, I get stumped in explaining to my daughter why Sammy can't go in to the pool when it says whites only.  As Asian Americans, we're in this kind of middle ground - we're not black, which is what a lot of children's books about segregation center on, and we're not white.  My daughter actually asked me one day what color she was - because books like this one talk about people who are white and people who are black.  Asian American doesn't really fit into that discussion, and telling a 3 year old that she is Asian American doesn't really seem to answer her question appropriately.

Regardless, this book is a nice way to talk about Korean Americans and Asian Americans in the context of the Olympics.

~ eliaday

The Electoral College... for kids

Are you still confused by the electoral college?  Still unsure who to vote for?

I found this book at Target the other day - it's called Grace for President.  In it, a young girl named Grace looks at all of the U.S. presidents, and asks, "Where are all the GIRLS?"

Grace then decides to run for president, and her teacher decides to host an election at the elementary school.  Grace's opponent is a young boy, Thomas Cobb who was the spelling bee champ, the captain of the soccer team, etc. etc.  The different kids in the school each pretend to be a state, and each decides who their electoral votes will go to. 

Thomas assumes that he will win, assumes that because there are more boys than girls in the electoral college, that he will win the election.  Grace works extra hard, campaigns, volunteers... (Sorry, I won't call this race for you yet.)

Did I mention that Grace is black?  I think it's so interesting that even in this pretend election, race isn't talked about in an explicit way... but gender is. 

And did I mention that the illustrator of the book is Le Uyen Pham, from the state of California, with 55 electoral votes?

I haven't given the book to my daughter yet... maybe come November when all these primaries are finally over and done with. =)

~ eliaday

Book Review: New Clothes for New Year's Day

The very nice people at Kane Miller Publishing sent me two books to review a while back, and I published a review of one of them, Yellow Umbrella here.  I loved the second book, New Clothes for New Year's Day by Hyun-joo Bae as well, but sort of forget to post my review.  I was going through some of my son's books today, and came across this lovely book, and thought that it  would make a great holiday gift for a child with a Korean heritage, or for any child or family interested in cultural traditions.

This beautifully illustrated book from South Korea chronicles a young girl's excitement over her family's Lunar New Year celebration. As she dresses for the event, she shows each piece of her elaborate clothing, from the "rainbow-striped jacket" of the hanbok to the silk pouch on a string for luck.  The drawings start out simply, and build in their richness of design and detail as the little girl adds a new piece of clothing.  At the end, the author explains Korean New Year celebrations, including the ceremonial soup that makes everyone a year older.  It is gorgeous book, and one I hope to pass along to my grandchildren some day.

My family didn't celebrate Korean New Year in the traditional way, so this was new to me.  It's wonderful to find a book that explains some of our cultural traditions in a way that both my son and I can enjoy.

Interestingly, when my son interviewed my mother for a school project, he asked her what her favorite holiday memory was, and she said, "New Year's, because I got to wear pretty, new clothes."  Now I know what she was talking about. I think my mother would enjoy this book just as much as I did.

Disclosure:  I received a free copy of this book to review.  Cross-posted at The Silent I.

--Glennia

Linklove: Korean-American Writers

This morning I read an essay about a Korean adoptee's search for her birth family, one in a New York Times series about the complexities of adoption.

Jeff Yang recently wrote about Good as Lily, a new graphic novel by a Korean-American writer. I'm putting it on my list.

And finally, I enjoyed this excerpt from a book of first-person essays by teenagers.

--Weigook Saram

Shortcomings

Recently as I clicked around the internets, I came across an excerpt of Adrian Tomine's Shortcomings.  I was hooked.  I'm not really a comic book graphic novel person, but after reading Persepolis I and II and American Born Chinese, maybe I am a graphic novel person.  These books rock, and not only because I can finish the book in a weekend and feel like I'm actually reading something.  I think the combination of snippets of conversation and some simple imagery can go a long way in conveying a message.  Maybe the fact that it's so bare bones makes the message that much more obvious.  But that can't be *it*, because some of the stuff in Shortcoming or American Born Chinese is so complicated.

In one of my favorite scenes, Ben Tanaka and his girl friend Miko are leaving an Asian American film festival.  Ben, king of pessimism, attacks the film and everyone who cheered for it because it was an Asian American film... because to him, it was just a bad movie that they applauded simply because it was about Asian Americans.   Hmmm.  Have I ever been part of that?

I laughed and cringed all at the same time through all of the bits about interracial dating.  About the "right" kind of person to bring home, whether it be about gender or ethnicity.  Is it wrong for a person to have a "type?"  What if this type happens to be white girls?  Or white guys?  How politicized should we be in our dating choices?  We think we know the whole story when we see a "white" guy walking down the street with an Asian American girl.  But do we?  Maybe it's the familiarity of the images, but the newness of the stories lie a little deeper. I don't know. 

Check it out for yourself.  Or, find me and I'll lend you my copy. =)

~ eliaday

cross-posted at Boston Progress Radio

Babies Can't Eat Kimchee, All the Colors of the Earth

The other day we picked up Babies Can't Eat Kimchee at the library. (I think I first saw it on Kim's blog. Thanks, Kim!) In the book, an older sister talks about all the things her baby sister can't do yet, and looks forward to the time when they will be able to play together. My daughter is very interested in babies right now, so she enjoyed the story. The text was simple, the artwork a colorful fusion of collage and painting. Despite the word "kimchee" in the title, the book is mostly about siblings who just happen to be Korean-American.

Another picture book in heavy rotation here is All the Colors of the Earth. The book begins "Children come in all the colors of the earth," and uses colors found in nature as metaphors for skin color and race. The language is thick with vivid imagery (the "tinkling pinks of tiny seashells", "hair like bouncy baby lambs") and the artwork depicts children of every race in various natural settings.

--Weigook Saram

A Place to Grow

I'm always trolling the library for books with Asian-American themes or characters for my daughter. My new favorite is a picture book called A Place to Grow, about a father and daughter discussing his reasons for immigrating as they work together in the garden. The language is vivid and rich in metaphor, and I have yet to read the book aloud without getting all choked up at the end, at the scene where the father recalls saying goodbye to his own father. It reminds me of all the immigrants I've known who were homesick for their families far away. The author is Korean-American, the illustrator born in the Phillippines, but the reasons for immigrating (war, poverty, the hope for a better life), are universal. I also like that the story is about a loving relationship between an Asian-American father and daughter. It's a little beyond the comprehension of my daughter, who is three, but I think it would be a great starting point for a discussion with a five or six-year-old.

--Weigook Saram