Tag Archives: BookDragon

June 19, 2013 · 9:08 am

Brush of the Gods by Lenore Look, illustrated by Meilo So

Brush of the GodsSomehow, over the last millennium-plus, the life story of Wu Daozi (689-759), possibly China’s greatest painter, went mostly missing. Chinese American author Lenore Look (best known for her entertaining double series about growing up bicultural, Alvin Ho and Ruby Lu), together with British Asian illustrator Meilo So, whimsically reimagine the artist in this splendid new title that echoes Wu’s greatest accomplishment: “He introduced the concept of depicting movement in figures and their clothing,” Look explains in her “Author’s Note.” So’s flowing watercolored lines make sure that “[h]is figures’ scarves billowed, their robes swum, and their hair blew in the wind.”

What begins as calligraphy lessons quickly becomes much more for the precocious young boy: “Each day something new and surprising dripped out of Daozi’s brush.” His drawings move from paper to “walls everywhere,” amazing all passers-by. Admirers willingly pay him, feed him … gifts he shares excitedly with the poor.

As the years pass, his paintings become so powerful as to fly, flutter, gallop off his brush. The monks accuse him of boasting and his admirers vanish. Yet the children continue to marvel and believe until the crowds once again multiply to such numbers that even the emperor requests “a grand masterpiece” on an entire palace wall, giving Wu “the greatest honor [he] could imagine.”

“Legend has it that Wu Daozi never died – he merely walked into his final painting … and disappeared,” Look adds at title’s end. That work – along with some 300 frescoes – didn’t survive. Piecing together references to Wu from poems and essays written by his contemporaries, Look and So create their own legend here … providing lavish inspiration for a new generation of artists to imagine and dream.

Readers: Children

Published: 2013

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Filed under ..Children/Picture Books, .Biography, .Fiction, British Asian, Chinese, Chinese American

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June 18, 2013 · 9:44 am

Wave by Sonali Deraniyagala

WaveConfession: I started Wave stuck in the ears, but didn’t get very far because the narrator seems to have a lisp – which is not a judgment about the reader herself, but my little ears had too challenging a time comprehending each sentence. This is a book for which absorbing every word is a must, so I resorted gratefully to the page. Bottom line: Wave is the most unflinching, illuminating memoir about horrific personal tragedy I have ever, ever come across.

The title begins in Yala, a national park on Sri Lanka’s southeastern coast, on December 26, 2004. What should have been the final day of an annual holiday break for a London-based family of four with their Sri Lankan grandparents is brought to a shattering end when an epic tsunami claims over 230,000 lives. Sonali Deraniyagala is her family’s sole survivor, losing her parents, husband, and two young sons. She wants nothing else but to join them: “I will kill myself soon.”

Over the next eight years, Deraniyagala – an Oxbridge-trained economist – progresses from utter “stunned” shutdown to allowing herself to admit the truth of her loss, to revisiting her memories little by little, and to opening her mind and heart to what her life might have become with her family intact. From obsessively bullying the Dutch renters of her Sri Lankan childhood home, to sleeping four years later in the unchanged bed of her London house, to finally being able to spend time with her sons’ maturing friends, Deraniyagala’s journey is simultaneously wrenching and remarkably hopeful.

Take note: the memoir is dedicated to “Alexandra and Kristiana” – the heart breaks yet again (and again and again) when you realize that entwined in those names are Deraniyagala’s children as they could have been, should have been. That a person can survive such loss is beyond comprehension; that she is able to share that experience with such unflinching, raw vulnerability is pure testimony to human resilience … and ultimately proves to be a literary gift of magnificent proportions.

Readers: Adult

Published: 2013

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Filed under ..Adult Readers, .Memoir, .Nonfiction, British Asian, South Asian, Sri Lankan

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June 17, 2013 · 11:34 am

Beyond the Moongate: True Stories of 1920s China by Elizabeth Quan

Beyond the Moongate“Moongates dotted the landscape of Old China,” the second of artist Elizabeth Quan’s two-part childhood memoir begins. “Stepping through one of these doorways was to enter a world of peace and happiness …”

Almost a century ago, Quan, her five siblings – “aged ten months to seven years” – together with their parents traveled “one full cycle of the moon” as depicted in Once Upon a Full Moon (2007) from their home in Canada to China. In Moongate, Quan presents the two years the family spent in her father’s ancestral southern Chinese village in 17 single-page vignettes, each accompanied by a vibrant watercolor memory; Quan’s biography notes that she “was the last protégée of Jack Pollock.” The children help raise a piglet, celebrate holidays, attend the Chinese school their father establishes, avoid pirates, and welcome a new baby brother.

At the heart of the family’s extended visit is Quan’s paternal grandmother, an “extraordinary woman” who the children call “Popo,” who begins the book with “her face lit up with joy” at the family’s arrival, and ends with her “waving bravely, tears streaming down her wrinkled brown face.” As idyllic as their stay has been, the family’s parting is especially bittersweet: they must leave two children behind – the newborn son who “could not legally be brought back to Canada,” and the youngest daughter to help their elderly grandmother care for her new grandson. While Canada’s anti-Asian immigration laws (with parallel restrictive legislation in the U.S.) are never directly mentioned, the “Afterword” reveals that the family’s reunion eight years later was made possible only with “special dispensation” via a Canadian government official.

In today’s era of ‘reverse’ immigration – new generations of Asian Pacific Americans seeking economic and cultural opportunities in their ancestral homelands, especially in China and India – Moongate provides an enthralling, contrasting view of returning ‘home,’ a century apart. Quan’s China then was “a land not yet touched by technology.” That China of “long lazy days … [is] a China forever gone.” Oh, were she to repeat the journey now …

Readers: Children

Published: 2013

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Filed under ..Children/Picture Books, .Memoir, .Nonfiction, Canadian, Canadian Asian Pacific American, Chinese

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June 16, 2013 · 11:11 am

The Night Ferry by Michael Robotham

Night FerryIf I had not stuck Tana French‘s Dublin Murder Squad thrillers in my ears, I might never have discovered Australian journalist-turned-bestselling novelist Michael Robotham – French’s The Likeness (I think) ended with the ‘if you liked x, then try y‘-recommendation that led me to Night Ferry.

Contrarian that I am, however, of course I have a quibble. Like French, Robotham elevates his latest protagonist from a less-than-starring role from his book before – love that clever narrative domino! While each book is also a standalone title, carryover details always enhance the reading experience. Night Ferry is #3 in Robotham’s dark oeuvre, which means his leading lady here, Alisha Barbar, had a supporting role in #2, Lost, whose protagonist Vincent Ruiz appeared first in Robotham’s debut, Shattered, which stars Robotham’s most popular leading man, Joseph O’Loughlin. Got all that? All that means is that if you’re new to Robotham’s thrillers (he has eight out already!), best to start at the beginning: Shattered. I’ll be reading backwards myself.

Okay, so introductory digression aside, meet Ali Barbar, a British detective of Indian Sikh heritage. A former competitive runner who almost made it to the Olympics, Ali has just recently returned to her job at London’s Metropolitan Police a year after a horrific accident: she helped solve a kidnapping case that left her spine crushed, and defied all her doctors to make a fully mobile recovery.

After eight years of silence, Ali receives a terrified note from her childhood best friend begging for Ali’s help. When Ali next meets Cate at a school reunion, Cate – visibly pregnant – manages to blurt out, “‘They want to take my baby. They can’t. You have to stop them.’”  That evening as they leave the reunion, Cate and her husband are fatally wounded, and Ali is left to piece together what happened.

At over 500 pages (or more than 12 hours stuck in the ears – narrator Clare Corbett is chillingly controlled), the plot will twist and turn plenty before Ali unravels the knotted strands around a fake pregnancy, illegal immigration, desperate refugees, school violence, virgin mothers, evil fathers, wayward heroes, while criss-crossing through Britain, the Netherlands, and Afghanistan.

Perhaps the one character detail that doesn’t quite keep up the pace is Ali’s Indian Sikh heritage. Her ethnicity seems superficial, occasionally clumsy, providing at best an opportunity to give her stereotypical Asian parents, especially her dotingly demanding mother determined to marry off her still-single daughter. The eligible doctor planted at a family gathering in order to meet Ali proves to be useful enough to the plot, although again, the mother-daughter-doctor could have been of any background. Ironically, that the protagonist is British Sikh was exactly what made me choose the title. As unfulfilling as that detail proves to be, the rest of the engaging narrative builds swift momentum you won’t want to miss.

Readers: Adult

Published: 2007 (United States)

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Filed under ..Adult Readers, .Audio, .Fiction, Australian, British Asian

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June 14, 2013 · 8:22 am

Raven Girl by Audrey Niffenegger

Raven GirlInternationally renowned for her two bestselling novels, The Time Traveler’s Wife and Her Fearful Symmetry, Audrey Niffenegger is also a splendiforous artist with double the graphic titles to her lauded name. Her fourth and latest is “a new fairy tale” with origins that begin with movement: “Awhile ago, Wayne McGregor [resident choreographer of London's Royal Ballet] invited me to collaborate with him to make a new dance. … [H]e would make the dance, I would make the story,” she explains in her ending “Acknowledgements.”

As fairy tales go, Niffenegger weaves shocking originality between the seemingly (deceptively) formulaic opening and closing: “Once there was a Postman who fell in love with a Raven,” the story begins; “Once there was a Raven Prince who fell in love with a Raven Girl. And they lived happily together ever after,” the final lines resound. In between is a human daughter who is birthed from an egg, the Cat who reports strange occurrences to the unbelieving Court of the Ravens, a plastic surgeon who speaks about “chimeras” and builds wings before falling to his own death, the Detective Boy who is carried off and never seen again, and a half Raven/human family that considers movie offers and the circus until a crowned stranger knocks at their door.

Niffenegger’s intricate etchings gorgeously embellish her fantastical tale – the first full illustration as the Postman’s shadow encompasses the young Raven as she looks up in troubled wonder is a haunting, lingering image. The detailed realism of the ravens – every feather, every wrinkle on the talons – sharply contrasts the more suggested, less fleshed out human figures who appear almost unfinished in comparison to their avian counterparts.

Niffenegger’s illustrations question the imagined and the real, flipping our expectations with regularity. “Fairy tales have their own remorseless logic and their own rules,” she writes. Presented on the page in words and art, Raven Girl is “ready to undergo its own transformation into dance.” The curtain rose last week in London … oh, to have had the wings to carry me there …!!

Tidbits: Click here for an interview with Niffenegger about the Raven Girl-Royal Ballet collaboration.

Click here for my interview with Niffenegger for the November 2010 issue of Bookslut.

Readers: Adult

Published: 2013

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Filed under ..Adult Readers, .Fiction, .Graphic Novel/Manga/Manwha, British, Nonethnic-specific

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June 11, 2013 · 12:22 pm

The Favorite Daughter by Allen Say

Favorite DaughterWell, goodness … the back flap of Allen Say’s latest arrives on my desk with a quote from my own review about his last title, Drawing from Memory! Huh, how did I miss that until now? Okay, I have to admit I’m just tickled at my discovery. Oh, but I do digress … back to the book already!

Caldecott Medalist Allen Say again turns to the personal in a warm story both dedicated to and about his daughter. “Yuriko came to stay with her father on Thursday that week,” the book begins. Over dinner, her request for a baby picture for “a class album” results in a “perfect” photo which reveals a plump-cheeked, blond hapa toddler making Play-Doh mud pies in the “‘prettiest kimono [the father] could find in Tokyo.’”

Yuriko’s excitement over that “perfect” photo diminishes into disappointment by the time she returns from school the next day. Her classmates insist Japanese have black hair, her new art teacher has inadvertently dubbed her “Eureka,” and even her closest friends are mimicking the mistake. “‘I want an American name, Daddy,’” Yuriko announces. “‘Umm … feels like I’m getting a new daughter here,’” Daddy responds.

That evening, “Michelle” accompanies her father to their favorite Japanese restaurant, where father and daughter discuss sushi, school, mistakes, and chopstick manners. Yuriko frets over her newly assigned art project, but her father cajoles her into a “‘real quick trip’” to Japan – at Golden Gate Park. There she finds so much more than the souvenir trinket she hoped for, as well as the exact inspiration she needs to create “‘something different from everyone else in art.’”

You may have already guessed where the title originates – such a moment of amusing, heartfelt delight! – but just in case, no spoilers here. Allen Say writes with such humor and patience, providing just the right amount of guidance to gently enable his hapa daughter toward self-discovery and cultural appreciation. As always, his illustrations are visual gifts, enhancing the smallest details that make the story whole: the ubiquitously recognizable soy sauce bottle, the backpack larger than the small child, the multi-culti park crowd, Yuriko’s slouchingly socked feet. Also included are two precious photographs of real-life Yuriko – as a toddler (mentioned above) and as a young woman in full kimono clearly taken during father and daughter’s (real-life) trip to Japan.

Daughter is Daddy’s side, and you can find Yuriko’s voice here, written when she was 13. Their father/daughter bond is unmistakable, proof that every once in a while, ‘playing favorites’ can be “the most wonderful time together.”

Click here to check out more of Allen Say’s titles in BookDragon.

Readers: Children

Published: 2013

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Filed under ...Absolute Favorites, ..Children/Picture Books, .Fiction, .Memoir, Hapa, Japanese American

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June 10, 2013 · 9:33 am

The Magic of Saida by M.G. Vassanji

Magic of SaidaPoisoned and hallucinating, a Canadian doctor lies in a hospital in the remote town of Kilwa in Tanzania. A stranger happens to hear a few brief details of the man’s outrageous story, and decides to introduce himself to this doctor with an Indian name – Kamal Punja – but an African appearance. From that chance encounter unravels a fantastical tale that covers multiple generations and continents … and begs an answer to the question, “Do you believe in magic?”

Kamal is the only child of an African woman whose Indian husband disappeared from their lives. His favorite childhood playmate is a young girl named Saida whose ancestors include a poet and warrior, a traitor and patriot in whose lives reflect the violent, tumultuous history of a repeatedly colonized land. At 11, Kamal is suddenly, wrenchingly separated from his mother and everything familiar when he’s sent to live with a paternal uncle in the capital city of Dar es Salaam. There he learns to be Indian first, eliding his African origins. That he never forgives his mother for what he considers betrayal and abandonment remains a disturbing, haunting element throughout.

Kamal grows into an educated young man of relative privilege, sent to university in neighboring Uganda, and yet he never loses sight of Saida’s presence so far away, certain that they will one day be united. Caught in the latest political upheavals overtaking his country and continent, Kamal lands in Canada where he becomes a successful doctor. Now solidly in middle age with a highly successful practice, married with two grown (completely Westernized) children, Kamal’s longing for his past brings him ‘home’ to Kilwa, desperately in search of answers about his beloved Saida.

M.G. Vassanji, who has twice won Canada’s prestigious Giller Prize (the inaugural 1994 award for The Book of Secrets, and again in 2003 for The In-Between World of Vikram Lall – my personal favorite), surely draws on personal experience: born in Africa of Indian descent and Canada-domiciled, “If pressed, Vassanji considers himself African Asian Canadian,” his biography states on his personal website. “[A]ttempts to pigeonhole him along communal (religious) or other lines, however, he considers narrow-minded, malicious, and oppressive,” his biography also warns!

As much as Saida is a sweeping epic, it also proves to be a clever allegory of returning to the past to catch a glimpse of alternate versions of the present: had Kamal stayed in Kilwa, he could have been Lateef; had he pursued a literary degree, he could have been Martin; had he been trapped in some sort of colonial service, he could have been Markham; had he chosen to become a local doctor, he could have been (the ironically named) Dr. Engineer. The many ‘what-if’s of his life beg the ultimate question, who might have Saida been had she lived the life Kamal once promised her …?

Tidbit: If you’ve read The Art of Hearing Heartbeats by Jan-Philipp Sendker, you might be struck by some uncanny similarities – I certainly was! Saida is the better-written novel; Heartbeats arrived Stateside last year with a decade-plus of international bestseller status … choices, choices.

Readers: Adult

Published: 2013

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Filed under ..Adult Readers, .Fiction, African, Canadian Asian Pacific American, Indian African, South Asian American

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June 7, 2013 · 12:11 pm

Wandering Son (vol. 4) by Shimura Takako, translated by Matt Thorn

Wandering Son 4First things first: click here to catch up. You’ll be well-rewarded for sure!

This latest volume opens with an intriguing graphic of characters captured in a two-page spread of bubbles and dots, labelled “The Wandering Son Board Game”: “Don’t be so fresh. 1 space back,” a sample bubble intones.

‘Fresh’ is exactly the right word to describe this gentle gender-bender series. The spotlight here belongs to “girly-boy” Shuichi, with whom everyone seems to fall in love – from his older sister Maho’s new model friends to the boy she has a crush on, to the class beauty queen whom other boys can’t help but fight over. Not quite aware of his charm, Shuichi is experiencing his own amorous agony, suddenly awed by his powerful new feelings for Yoshino, his girl-who-wants-to-be-a-boy-best buddy.

Amidst the emotional turbulence that is adolescence, Shuichi and Yoshino have an especially difficult time trying to understand their transforming, burgeoning identities, unprepared for their unpredictable moods and reactions. All rules of ‘shoulda-woulda-coulda’ are off as children morph into young adults, dealing with an onslaught of physical and emotional challenges. ‘It’s complicated,’ as my teens regularly quip.

Creator Shimura Takako is a compassionate, empathetic storyteller without judgment or guile. Her young characters face their inescapable maturity as best as they can in a brave new world of ‘gender-fluid’ (my kids taught me that from their last ‘free to be me’-annual assembly). Adulthood looms … and ready or not, here it comes!

Readers: Middle Grade, Young Adult

Published: 2012 (United States)

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Filed under ..Middle Grade Readers, ..Young Adult Readers, .Fiction, .Graphic Novel/Manga/Manwha, .Translation, Japanese

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June 6, 2013 · 9:02 am

OY FEH SO? by Cary Fagan, illustrated by Gary Clement

Oy Feh So“Every Sunday my two aunts and my uncle come to visit.” This isn’t exactly a joyous occasion for the three children who watch from the front window as the old Lincoln arrives in the driveway. They know only too well what to expect: “Oy,” sighs Aunt Essy, “Feh,” groans Aunt Chanah, “So?” quips Uncle Sam. “That was all they ever said.”

Until today: “… my brother, my sister, and I had a plan” that includes robbers, swords, a dragon (of course, hee hee!), and even space invaders. But nothing seems to faze Aunt Essy, Aunt Chanah, and Uncle Sam who won’t even budge an inch from the couch and chair where they seem to be permanently planted. And, no surprise, their monotonous vocabulary remains exactly the same even when the transporter carpet is headed into the spaceship!

Angry with their non-reactions, the three kids decide if they can’t change them, they’ll join them. “OY,” “FEH,” “SO?” indeed! This Sunday takes a wholly unexpected turn …

Author Cary Fagan clearly knows how to laugh … and you’ll be only too happy to join in. Thanks to illustrator Gary Clement, you might even recognize your own eccentric relatives on the page. Clement is Fagan’s perfectly matched energetic partner – your family’s oldsters never looked, or sounded this good, hee hee ho ho! Let the raucous delight begin …!!

Readers: Children

Published: 2013

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Filed under ..Children/Picture Books, .Fiction, Canadian, Jewish

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June 5, 2013 · 10:02 am

eleanor & park by Rainbow Rowell

eleanor & parkWow, I sort of wondered … but now I don’t need to anymore, because author Rainbow Rowell has already answered a question (the question for certain readers like me?) that I hadn’t even gotten around to formulating just yet: “Why is Park Korean?” No spoilers here … you’ll have to read the book, then the post (preferably in that order), for yourself. In case you need more prodding to start already, here’s another recent affirming reason: eleanor & park just won the 2013 Boston Globe–Horn Book Award (one of the most prestigious kiddie book recognitions) for Fiction. And for those of you going aural, let me assure you that Rebecca Lowman and Sunil Malhotra take turns narrating this unlikely romance into heart-thumping, hand-wringing, convincing real life.

In 1986 Omaha, Nebraska, two very different 16-year-olds are about to fall in love for the first time in their young lives. Park, the local, is hapa Korean, gets embarrassed by his parents’ neverending displays of affection, loves punk rock, and used to date the school’s hottest girl back in middle school. Eleanor, the neighborhood newbie with the wild red hair and never-matching outfits, gets stuck sitting next to Park on the bus. She’s just been reunited with her mother and younger siblings, and must navigate through a crowded, unsettling new life trying to stay out of the way of her unpredictable stepfather-from-hell.

After a less-than-friendly start for the two forced-together seatmates, comic books – don’t ever let anyone tell you manga isn’t romance-inducing! – bring the odd couple together. But first love is never easy, especially when families – both inadvertently and intentionally – stand in the way.

Get ready to sigh and snicker, cringe and cry. Those awkward high school moments (decades later, why are they still so familiar??) are all in here, interspersed through an incongruously gorgeous love affair of swooning proportions. Rowell has written that versatile, ageless story with which teens will immediately identity, and oldsters will nostalgically recognize: to the final page and beyond, eleanor & park is one empathetic, adroit achievement.

Readers: Young Adult, Adult

Published: 2013

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Filed under ..Adult Readers, ..Young Adult Readers, .Audio, .Fiction, Hapa, Korean American, Nonethnic-specific

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