Get to Know Asian American Children’s Authors: Grace Lin, Author of Starry River of the Sky

On the blog this week, I am very excited to have one of my favorite Asian American children’s authors, Newbery Honor receiving author and illustrator Grace Lin!  (See my review of her adorable book Dumpling Days.)

1) Which of your characters do you most identify with and why?

Grace Lin: Well, I guess that would have to be Pacy from the Year of the Dog, Year of the Rat, and Dumpling Days, since those are almost autobiographies! Those books are fictionalized, but most the events that happened as well as the characters are pretty true-to-life. So true that even the names are real. My Chinese or middle name is Pacy and my sisters are Lissy and Ki-Ki, just like in the book. I took quite a bit of inspiration from classics like Laura Ingalls Wilder’s Little House books and Little Women, books where the stories are straight from the author’s real life.

2) If you could give your Asian American kid readers one piece of advice, what would it be?

GL: Well, this would be for their parents as well as for the kids…you will never be Asian and you will never be American. You will always be Asian-American. Don’t try to choose a side, because it is not a dividing line.  And while there will definitely be points in your life where that hyphen between the two identities seem like it is subtracting from the other, in the end you’ll find it’s actually a wonderful bridge. Life with a hyphenated-identity is actually doubly richer. My hope is my books show people a glimpse of that richness.

3) Who is your favorite Asian American children’s author right now (other than yourself)?

GL: I admit I am behind on the newer Asian-American authors–I’ve heard great things about Wendy Shang and Kat Yeh, though I haven’t had the opportunity to read their books yet (I have a two-year old toddler!). But my “old” stand by favorites are Lenore Look (LOVE the Ruby Lu books), Gene Luen Yang (American Born Chinese is a really a masterpiece), Linda Sue Park (A Single Shard…sigh), Lisa Yee (Asian American girl? Yes!)  and I could go on and on. I think there are so many great Asian-American authors out there with amazing books,  the difficult part is making sure their books are read more widely.

About the Author:

Grace Lin is the author and illustrator of picture books, early readers and middle grade novels. Grace’s 2010 Newbery Honor book WHERE THE MOUNTAIN MEETS THE MOON was chosen for Al Roker’s Today Show Kid’s Book Club and was a NY Times Bestseller. LING & TING, Grace’s first early reader, was honored with the Theodor Geisel Honor in 2011. An Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award nominee for the US, most of Grace’s books are about the Asian-American experience because she believes, “Books erase bias, they make the uncommon everyday, and the mundane exotic. A book makes all cultures universal.” Her next book, LING & TING: TWICE AS SILLY will be out this fall and she is hard at work on another novel. See more about Grace and her work at www.gracelin.com or her blog http://www.gracelinblog.com

#littlehouseontheprairie #yearoftherat #lauraingallswilder #LisaYee #geneluenyang #newberyaward #gracelin #RubyLu #KatYeh #littlewomen #wendyshang #blogseries #AmericanGirl #AmericanBornChinese #wherethemountainmeetsthemoon #LenoreLook #yearofthedog #AsianAmericanAuthorSeries #DumplingDays #LingampTing

MG Novel: Nest by Esther Ehrlich

Nest by Esther Ehrlich

Nest by Esther Ehrlich is a literary upper middle grade to lower YA novel (read: “tween novel”) about a young girl named Naomi, or “Chirp,” living in 1970s Cape Cod and what happens to her family when her mother, Hannah, is diagnosed with multiple sclerosis. Chirp is obsessed with birds and copes with her family situation by birdwatching and through her growing friendship with Joey, a boy living across the street who also wants to escape his own trouble family life.

This novel does not hold anything back. Prepare to cry your heart out as I did when I read this. While it does end on a hopeful note, there are some terribly sad moments. Part of me was completely shattered for poor Chirp (and my gut reaction is always NOOOO!!!), but the realism of her situation and the author’s research into Hannah’s condition (mental and physical) made these events feel very authentic and necessary.

An additional layer to this is that Chirp and her family are Jewish. At the beginning of the novel, the Jewish information and moments felt added in–it felt like we were being told that Chirp was Jewish rather than being shown (the editor’s note at the start including Yiddish words also adds to this feeling). However, as the novel progressed and there are a few spot-on and humorous moments, her heritage begins to feel more organic. For example, Chirp isn’t sure if she’s allowed to say the word “Jesus” and feels strange seeing a bible in a motel room, things I could totally relate to having grown up Hindu in Arkansas.

However, the one issue for me in this book was the pacing. While this is a literary, character-driven novel and an action-packed plot would have been completely wrong for this book, I still felt there were times when I wasn’t quite sure where the story was going or what type of story I was reading. I loved the bird information and images (especially loved the Cape Cod setting), but these tidbits weren’t tied as closely as I’d expected to the storyline.

All in all, this is a heartfelt, thoughtful book that will speak to kids looking for a more serious read or are going through tougher issues in their own lives, but aren’t quite ready for the mature romances in many young adult novels.

Disclosure: Review of free ARC I received through NetGalley.

#bookreview #tween #middlegrade #issuesbook #EstherEhrlich #Nest #medicalfiction

Get to Know Asian American Children’s Authors: Sheela Chari, Author of Vanished

This week’s Asian American children’s author is Sheela Chari, author of the middle grade mystery novel Vanished. (BTW I love this cover! So mysterious.)

1) Which of your characters do you most identify with and why?

Sheela Chari: Vanished was first written as a gift for my niece, so the main character, Neela, bears her name. In the beginning, I assumed the main character would be her, too. But over time I found myself slowly creeping away from the person in real life I knew, to someone fictional on paper. Eventually Neela turned into someone different. As I kept writing, I found that there was a lot of me in this unfolding character – that I finally had a chance to write about a part of myself I had never articulated before.

Aside from being on a hunt for her missing instrument, Neela is afraid of playing in public. She has stage fright. Well, so did I. It took me years to realize there was a name for it. When I was in college, I felt a vague, nameless shame when auditioning and performing on my violin in front of others. But as I wrote about Neela and her fear of performing on her veena, I realized it was one of the most natural and fundamental fears that many artists face. It’s all about other people’s perception of you, and whether you can rise to the impossible standards you imagine out there.

By the end of Vanished, Neela comes to terms with performing, by arriving at the idea that creating music is done first and foremost for yourself. This was an idea that took me years to embrace. It might sound a little corny – putting yourself first when it comes to music – but I think it’s so important to convey to young people, who face the pressures of being musicians at an age where music can be all about performance and competition, and less about the pleasure and satisfaction of playing.

2) If you could give your Asian American kid readers one piece of advice, what would it be?

SC: This is a great question. Last year I began teaching a writing workshop for Indian-American kids, and at the end of every class, I held a drawing for a free book. At first I just wanted the kids to be excited about getting a brand-new book, so I tried really hard to offer crowd-pleasers – popular books that would be safe bets. But there was also a part of me that really wanted to use this opportunity to introduce books with multi-ethnic characters – especially Indian-American ones – that my students might otherwise not know about. I found that over the year, I could offer a mixture of both, and by doing a short reading at the beginning, I could pique their interests as long as the book was interesting.

And that’s really what it’s all about, isn’t it? So my advice to young Asian-American kid readers is this – there are some really wonderful multicultural/ multi-ethnic charactered books out there. But you have to seek them out. You have to demand them by asking for them from your bookstores and libraries and parents. You don’t always have to read about characters that look different from you. On the same token, you don’t have read only one kind of book about Asian-Americans either – the horizon is opening up to include fantasy, mystery, adventure and even historical fiction. In the end, an interesting book can be about anybody in any circumstance, but it’s important to keep your eyes and ears open.

3) Who is your favorite Asian American children’s author right now (other than yourself)?

SC: Ah! I don’t have favorite writers.There are so many wonderful ones out there, I couldn’t limit myself to one or two. But I will mention the last Asian-American themed book that delighted me and has stayed with me for a long time. I absolutely loved The Thing About Luck by Cynthia Kadohata, which won the National Book Award and the APALA Children’s Literature Award, for which I served on the awards committee. Kadohata does a wonderful job of weaving together the lives of an American working class family and their Japanese heritage – of capturing small-town middle-America farming life along with what it means to be a Japanese-American twelve-year old girl growing up in its midst. Best of all, Kadohata goes beyond race and circumstance to write a thoughtful story about the patterns of our lives, the coming and going of seasons, of luck, and of triumphing over setbacks.

About the author:

Sheela Chari is the author of VANISHED, a 2012 APALA Children’s Literature Honor Book; an Edgar nominee for best juvenile mystery; and an Al’s Book Club Pick on the Today Show. Sheela has an MFA in creative writing from New York University, and teaches writing at the Rye Arts Center. She lives in New York with her family.

#mysterynovels #CynthiaKadohata #middlegrade #SheelaChari #blogseries #TheThingAboutLuck #AsianAmericanAuthorSeries #Vanished