Mooncakes is the lyrical story of a young girl who shares the special celebration of the Chinese Moon Festival with her parents. As they eat mooncakes, drink tea and watch the night sky together, Mama and Baba tell ancient tales of a magical tree that can never be cut down, the Jade Rabbit who came to live on the moon and one brave woman’s journey to eternal life.
When tsunami strikes Kenta’s small village in Japan, he ran to school far up the hill, where the waves couldn’t reach. Climbing to safer ground, Kenta watches helplessly as his prized soccer ball goes bouncing down a hill and gets swept away by the waves. When the tsunami recede, his family returned to their home, they found village ruined and could not find their belongings. Out on the ocean, Kenta’s soccer ball floated across the ocean. Finally the ball reached the other side of the world, where a boy picked the ball up and sent it back to Kenta, even though he could not read the word on the ball.
Jasper is a moon bear who was held in a cage by bear farmers in rural China. The farmers extracted the bile from Jasper’s body and sold it to be used in traditional medicines. Despite how badly he was treated, Jasper was able to slowly recover, forgive, and trust humans. With each new bear who arrives in the sanctuary, Jasper becomes a friend, letting them know that they are in a place where healing will begin.
With gorgeous illustrations based on Chinese painting techniques, a lively retelling of the legendary animals’ race that led to the twelve signs on the Chinese Zodiac.
linocuts
A rope passed down through the generations frames an African American family’s story as they journey north during the time of the Great Migration.
See the review at WOW Review, Volume VI, Issue 4
A collection of popular tales told to young children in places such as Argentina, Cuba, Colombia, Nicaragua, and Mexico.
In Cousins a little girl lives in two opposite worlds. There’s the house where she lives with her father and grandmother that is full of beautiful and expensive things, but rather quiet. Then there’s her other grandmother’s house where her cousin lives, which is always brimming with people. She loves her cousin’s world. But when she does something she regrets, she must confront her feelings of guilt. Eventually, she realizes she is very lucky to be able to move gracefully between two such wonderful worlds.
A man fills the Australian wilderness with singing, but because he is old, one day he forgets to sing, so the animals help him remember.
This playful, rhyming picture book offers a fresh and fun new take on the song “There Was an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Fly.” In Claire Saxby’s telling, a white-bearded, big-bellied sailor sets things in motion by swallowing a krill. He then goes on to swallow progressively larger sea creatures, each meant to catch the preceding one.
When each of the umbrellas he brings back to his village disappears, Kiri Mama devises a plan to track down the thief.