[Monday Reading] Soybean Picnics and Mahjong: Family Rituals and Traditions in Ginnie and Beth Lo’s Picturebooks

Myra here.

It’s Monday, What are You Reading is a meme hosted by Jen from Teach Mentor Texts and Kellee and Ricki from Unleashing Readers (brainchild of Sheila at BookJourney). Since two of our friends, Linda from Teacher Dance and Tara from A Teaching Life have been joining this meme for quite awhile now, we thought of joining this warm and inviting community.

Last Week’s Review and Miscellany Posts

We’re also inviting everyone to join our Award Winning Books Reading Challenge for 2015 (#AWBRead2015)! It’s that time of the year to set new reading goals for the coming year.

Here is the sign up page and the May-June linky if you already have reviews up. One randomly-selected participant would receive a copy of Lone Wolf, courtesy of Pansing books.

Click here to view my announcement post to learn more details.

I chanced upon these two books created by sister-tandem Beth and Ginnie Lo as I was browsing through possible books to feature in our library. Both books celebrate the joy of family togetherness, meals shared together, and the many distinctive features of what makes a home away from home.

Auntie Yang’s Great Soybean Picnic

Written by: Ginnie Lo Illustrated by: Beth Lo
Published by: Lee & Low Books, Inc., 2012
Borrowed from the Jurong West Public Library. Book photos taken by me.

For immigrant families, finding a taste of home in a different country is a cause for celebration. This is exactly what happened to Auntie Yang and her family as they chanced upon a soybean farm in Illinois while on their usual Sunday Drive with two families squeezed into the family’s old car:

In Illinois, soybeans were grown to feed cows and pigs, not people – but in China, soybeans were one of the most important foods of all.

As all surprising discoveries go, this particular one has grown from a small soybean picnic with two families to a large annual event that gathers “young Chinese immigrant families who had been displaced by the political upheaval in China during World War II. The picnic continued to grow over a span of forty years and was always one of the highlights of late summer” as found in the Author’s and Illustrator’s Note.

I like how the picturebook started off with the classic road trip of families visiting each other during the summer and ended with the families’ embracing the community and finding their place in their new home. Unlike other picturebooks, this one has more text than usual, and the reader needs to be somewhat invested in the story to stay on; but it does pay off beautifully in the end. Loosely based on the author’s and illustrator’s experiences as Chinese-Americans, this book would be a wonderful addition to any teacher’s or parent’s multicultural library.

Mahjong All Day Long

Written by: Ginnie Lo Illustrated by: Beth Lo
Published by: Walker & Company, 2005
Borrowed from the Jurong West Public Library. Book photos taken by me.

Compared to Auntie Yang’s Great Soybean Picnic, this book is a much lighter read with around two lines of text found on each page with small asides written in smaller fonts on the bottom of the page with Chinese translations.

Unlike other American families, perhaps, who play board games like Monopoly or word games like Scrabble, the family of sisters Beth and Ginnie Lo play mahjong instead for fun and recreation. While mahjong may also be considered a competitive game, the sisters noted that they usually just play for fun, and their games are accompanied with BaBa allowing the kids to sit from his lap or Uncle T. T. singing Chinese opera as he plays, or Auntie Helen nibbling on watermelon seeds as could be found in the image above.

Beth and Ginnie Lo were able to capture the little gestures, the tiny details that when stacked together like mahjong tiles – make up a family.

Teachers and parents would also be happy to note that there is an extensive backmatter that provides a full description of what mahjong is as well as other reference materials that the reader may want to check out to know more about mahjong.

Currently Reading…

I finished reading Tim Winton’s Eyrie for my book club at my institution – truly an achingly beautiful novel. I can not wait to discuss this novel next week as there were a few book club friends who mentioned that it was a bit slow-going for them in the beginning. The pace picked up considerably somewhere in the middle, and eventually became a page-turner in the end. I am unable to connect to the characters in the story, but I felt deeply sorry for the young boy who was at the heart of the entire narrative and provided the main character some semblance of redemption and eventually proved to be his undoing. Definitely a book-club kind of novel.

Since I have three book clubs here, I also need to read The Perks of Being A Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky for Saturday Night Out for Book Geeks and From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler by e.l. konigsburg for GatheringReaders, my book club with young readers at the Jurong West Public Library this month. Since I am traveling to Putrajaya Malaysia tomorrow to present a paper at the Asia Oceania Regional IBBY Congress organized by the Malaysian Board on Books for Young People, I will have time to read on the bus while on my way there.

I am also reading The Kindly Ones by Neil Gaiman and The Wave In The Mind: Talks and Essays on the Writer, the Reader and the Imagination by Ursula LeGuin.

Mahjong All Day Long won the national Marion Vannett Ridgeway Award for first time writers/ illustrators and a Montana Honor Book Award.

Auntie Yang’s Great Soybean Picnic won Best Children’s Books of the Year – Bank Street College of Education; Charlotte Zolotow Award – Highly Commended Title – Cooperative Children’s Book Center (CCBC); Picture Book winner – Oregon Spirit Book Award

#AWBRead2015 Reading Challenge: 42-43 (35)