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Celebrating
Asian Heritage Month with Books
by
Selene S. Vasquez
Picture
Book: Ages 8 Thru 12
Coolies by Yin. Illustrated by Chris Soentpiet.
(Philomel, 40 pp., $16.99).
Two Chinese brothers undertake an arduous voyage across the Pacific
Ocean to work on the transcontinental railroad of mid-nineteenth
century America. Grand scale watercolor artwork offers cinematic
drama to this immigrant story of labor and strife.
Folk
Tales: Ages 8 Thru 12
The Serpent Slayer and Other Stories of Strong Women by
Katrin Tchana. Illustrated by Trina Schart Hyman. (Little, Brown
and Co., 113 pp., $21.95).
Eighteen folk tales featuring swashbuckling heroines with a queen-size
dose of feminine courage, strength, and brilliant wit. Electrifying
artwork boosts the energy and sheer poetry of these non-wimpy
women.
Biography:
Ages 8 Thru 10
Basho and the Fox by Tim Myers. Illustrated by Oki S. Han.
(Cavendish, 32 pp., $15.95).
Believing itself a better poet than humans, a fox offers the seventeenth-century
Japanese poet, Basho all the cherries from a nearby tree if he
can write one good haiku. The imagery of nature in this fictionalized
biography is reminiscent of the elegant simplicity of this ancient
form of poetry.
Nonfiction:
Ages 12 And Up
Fighting for Honor: Japanese Americans and World War II.
(Clarion, 118 pp., $16.00).
An eye-opening account of Japanese-American soldiers’ courageous
war feats to prove their loyalty to the United States at the height
of anti-Japanese sentiment. The plight of their internment is
clearly explained with a map, chronology, and bibliography listing
additional books, videos, and web sites on this sensitive topic.
Selene
S. Vasquez is a media specialist at Orange Brook Elementary School
in Hollywood, Florida. She is formerly a children’s librarian
for the New York Public Library.
Education Update, Inc., P.O. Box 20005, New York, NY 10001. Tel:
(212) 481-5519. Fax: (212) 481-3919. Email: ednews1@aol.com.
All material is copyrighted and may not be printed without express consent of
the publisher. © 2001.
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