We had a great meeting with lotsa great 'pot luck' dishes, a terrific discussion, and just fun being together. We began with our picture book, Paper Son by Julie Leung; illustrated by Chris Sasaki. We all felt that this story of Tyrus Wong, a Chinese-American who immigrated to the U.S. as a 'paper son', and went on to become a noted painter in multiple media who created all of the scenery for the 1942 world-famed Bambi film and as an older man a noted maker of Chinese-style 'flying' kites . We all agreed that this was an important story to know, and some were surprised to know of Wong's history with the Walt Disney film. But we had mixed feelings as to the book itself. A couple of readers liked the beginning pages that depicted young Tai Yow's entry at Angel Island and early days as a Chinese immigrant who had to lie about his identity in order to be admitted to the U.S., and whose name was Americanized to "Tyrus" by his teachers in his Sacramento school. We liked how it depicted his early talents in art, and how he used many Chinese art techniques in his work, even as a young boy. But many of us felt that as the story of the events of his life continued it became more 'adulty' with less emotion, and that a better-written story would have been more interesting to young readers. We all liked the illustrations, and were surprised to learn that they had been done digitally by Sasaki. But we did note the emotional feelings they evoked, as well as the very subtle portrayals of the prejudice Wong experienced from the moment he arrived and as he continued to function in the American environment of his time. We wished there had been more about Los Angeles during that time, which is where Wong had settled, as well as more about his family, who were only shown in one photo in the Back Matter of the book. We wanted to know more, and were sorry that the Author's Note basically repeated the story in the book, and provided no more details for readers. We felt that this book would have many uses at different grade levels -- as an introduction to the life of an important Chinese-American artist, and for art teachers or for class discussions related to immigration and the feelings of new immigrants in our country.
We also had mixed feelings about our novel, Pie in the Sky by Remy Lai. Although it had been billed as a 'humorous' book, many of us did not feel there was much humor...except maybe in Lai's 2-color cartoon-like depictions of many scenes in the story between 12-year-old Jingwen and his 9-year-old brother Yanghao, who had been taken by their mother from an unnamed country to Australia after their father, a bakeshop owner, had died in an auto accident. We wished we knew where they came from and why they chose to move to Australia. We liked the fact that the story dealt with the issues of relocation, not knowing English, not really having friends, sibling rivalry, lying to his mom, etc., but -- we felt that this had been done so many times before, and this book added nothing new, and could have been shorter. The crux of the story (and what made it so long) was that the brothers tried to bake the 12 different cakes that Jingwen felt could honor his father, but we never really knew why. (...and we wished there had been recipes!) Some of those situations were implausible, and details here would make this recap too long also. We felt that by the time we got to the end of the book (which a few readers couldn't even finish) we were tired of the baking scenarios, and the 'climax' of WHY Jingwen wanted to do that was finally revealed. We did, however, agree that young readers would probably like this book, many of whose pages resembled a graphic novel, and that the humor in the illustrations might keep them reading. It wasn't a bad book; just not a thrilling one.
