New year, new stories

Lunar New Year begins January 29 and is featured in a selection of the recommended titles below, all eight of which star real-life, fictional, or fantastical characters from diverse Asian heritages. See also the Asian Americans tag on hbook.com, the Asian Americans tag in the Guide/Reviews Database, and for older readers, Fanfare 2024 favorite Lunar New Year Love Story.

Uprooted: A Memoir About What Happens When Your Family Moves Back
by Ruth Chan; illus. by the author
Middle School    Roaring Brook    288 pp.
9/24    9781250855336    $22.99
Paper ed.  9781250855343    $14.99

In a graphic memoir set in 1993, thirteen-year-old Chinese Canadian Ruth is apprehensive about her family’s upcoming move from Toronto to Hong Kong. While her parents are thrilled (her mother is returning home after thirty years), Ruth loves her life in Toronto and doesn’t want to leave. Her father tries to reassure her, telling her that “it’s okay to be nervous about change and the unknown. Just remember that you’ll be okay. The unknown is simply a part of life.” But adjusting to the move is difficult. Ruth feels alienated from her extended family, struggling to communicate in Cantonese and often breaching Chinese etiquette. When a new friend begins ignoring her and her father’s job takes him away from the family during the week, Ruth’s emotions erupt over a double-page panel. She finds understanding when her mother shares her immigration story and when her father acknowledges her difficulties. Showing the courage, perseverance, and patience of her ancestors, Ruth gains confidence in herself and learns to thrive in her new home. Ruth’s emotional world is active and relatable, and she is depicted with a range of facial expressions. Panels set in 1993 are shown in a soft, neutral color palette and reflect the bustle of her modern-day life in Hong Kong; flashbacks to her parents’ stories are sepia-toned, evoking nostalgia about villages and farms. Sincere and engaging, Chan’s memoir explores themes of cross-cultural family dynamics and finding a place to belong through human connection. KRISTINE TECHAVANICH

Noodle & Bao
by Shaina Lu; illus. by the author
Intermediate, Middle School    Quill Tree/HarperCollins    224 pp.
10/24    9780063283411    $24.99
Paper ed.  9780063283404    $15.99
e-book ed.  9780063283428    $11.99

Momo has spent her entire life in her beloved Town 99, a fictional setting resembling real-world Chinatowns but where humans and anthropomorphic animals from different cultures coexist. Gentrification threatens the survival of Noodle & Bao, the restaurant run by Momo’s best friend’s ah-ma (grandmother) — and it also threatens Momo’s own housing situation. Not content to stand by and do nothing, Momo makes plans to organize Town 99’s residents against the corporation funding the town’s gentrification. Lu’s clean and expressive graphic-novel style, with most characters drawn with exaggeratedly round features and figures, radiates gentleness and warmth. The limited two-tone palette of black and red, combined with a mix of flat coloring and screen tones, creates contrasts and highlights as well as visual variety and texture. The use of multiple Chinese languages (Mandarin and Cantonese), usually but not always accompanied by English translations, represents the linguistic diversity of the setting and appeals to audiences with multiple literacies, adding layers of nuance and enjoyment for those in the know. Blending silly moments and fantastical elements with a more serious real-world issue, this book serves as both a loving tribute to Chinatowns and an invitation to young readers to stand up against injustice in their own communities. Back matter gives information on Chinatowns, gentrification, community organizing, and language. SHENWEI CHANG

Countdown to Yesterday
by Shirley Marr
Intermediate    Simon    272 pp.
6/24    9781665948517    $17.99
e-book ed.  9781665948531    $10.99

After his parents unexpectedly announce their divorce, eleven-year-old James decides his new friend Yan’s time machine might give him a chance to go back to a happier past. When James’s mother moves out, he must adapt to frequent switches between two homes and to parents redefining themselves at midlife. Some of the changes are, in his opinion, improvements, such as his mother’s first-ever entry into his school’s annual cake-making fundraiser; others, such as meeting Yan on his route to school with Mom, take some time to appreciate. When Yan’s time machine doesn’t have the intended effect (it’s a proxy server that lets her access the 1990s-era internet), she goes to work adapting it to help James. Chapter headings count down the time remaining until their launch, and James reflects on experiences that will never happen again now that his parents have split up. When Yan’s machine takes him back to those perfect moments, though, he sees them from a different perspective and discovers that the divorce was not such a surprise after all. Marr effectively blends elements of an adventure story with a quieter, character-driven plot. Subjects such as racial identity (James and Yan, like Marr, are both Chinese Australian, but Yan is a recent immigrant) and bullying are seamlessly integrated into the story, and James’s realization that the adults around him are more complex than he’d realized is well handled. An enjoyable read with an innovative twist on the time-travel narrative. SARAH RETTGER

A Two-Placed Heart: A Memoir in Verse
by Doan Phuong Nguyen
Intermediate, Middle School    Tu/Lee & Low    352 pp.
9/24    9781643796420    $24.95

In this fictionalized memoir in verse set in 1991, Bom both envies and resents her younger sister Bo’s ignorance about their life in Vietnam, before their family immigrated to the United States as refugees five years earlier. Whereas Bo seems comfortably American in their Nashville home, Bom feels torn between two places and cultures. Worse, she worries that she and her sister will forget where they came from. To combat that loss, Bom uses her father’s typewriter to compose poems filled with memories and family stories. Nguyen’s narrative moves smoothly between Bom’s past and present, between Vietnam and the U.S. She depicts a childhood in Vietnam filled with love, family, and community despite the shadows cast by war, political persecution, and poverty. By contrast, the U.S. is foreign and alienating to Bom, who faces racist and xenophobic bullying at school. Nguyen employs evocative language to give voice to Bom’s feelings: “I am like a fish on land / thirsting for the water, / with the shoreline out of reach.” Spacing and line-formatting choices also emphasize thematic elements such as the weight of psychological distance and the transience of memory. The first-person narration and direct address in the poems create an intimacy between narrator and reader, with the tone varying from explanatory to vulnerable by turns. A heartfelt story about identity and heritage refracted through the lens of a complex sibling relationship. Front matter includes a glossary and a family tree; an author’s note is appended. SHENWEI CHANG

Gracie Under the Waves
by Linda Sue Park; illus. by Maxine Vee
Intermediate    Allida/HarperCollins    176 pp.
9/24    9780063346291    $18.99
e-book ed.  9780063346314    $9.99

Gracie Kim loves snorkeling and hopes to persuade her parents to spend spring break in the coastal community of Roatán, Honduras. Her younger brother Ben’s unsolicited help keeps introducing wrinkles into her trip-planning. “It would be completely unfair to say that Ben always ruined Gracie’s plans. It would, however, be both fair and realistic to say that Ben always had the potential to ruin her plans.” The family does make the trip, and Gracie is delighted to be snorkeling on a real reef. She makes friends with local conservationists and learns about how climate change is affecting reefs; when an infection incurred from the reef puts her perfect vacation in jeopardy, she finds a way to cope. But Ben’s constant over-enthusiasm and interference get under Gracie’s skin until her emotions get the better of her. The conflict is resolved authentically, with both Gracie and her parents learning new ways to manage Ben’s behavior (which hints at a neurodivergence such as ADHD), and the book’s climax delivers, with genuine but age-appropriate danger and heroism. The environmental and social-justice messages never take the reader out of the story, and Park nails the balance between Gracie’s tween self-centeredness and her caring relationships with friends and family. SARAH RETTGER

The Squad
by Christina Soontornvat; illus. by Joanna Cacao; color by Wes Dzioba
Middle School    Graphix/Scholastic    288 pp.
11/24    9781338741322    $24.99
Paper ed.  9781338741315    $12.99
e-book ed.  9781546121978    $12.99

Soontornvat’s graphic-memoir adventures (The Tryout, rev. 11/22) continue as she enters her second semester of eighth grade. She’s still one of the few Asian American students in her small Texas town and still longs to be a cheerleader, but many things are changing; she and best friend Megan now include classmate Leanne in their group; she is close with the kids in her art class; and most notably, her parents are getting divorced. Despite the upheaval at home, Christina tries out for the cheerleading squad and makes the team. But with a new routine and social circle, she faces even more changes; and bottling up her resentment and sadness makes her uncharacteristically bitter and mean. In this second installment, Soontornvat lays bare the difficulties of girlhood, showing both vulnerability and growth, in an approachable text accompanied by lively illustrations. Ultimately, the lesson is finding strength in community: “I didn’t need life to be perfect…I just needed my squad.” GABI KIM HUESCA

Lion Dancers
by Cai Tse; illus. by the author
Intermediate, Middle School    Simon    304 pp.
8/24    9781665927246    $23.99
Paper ed.  9781665927239    $13.99
e-book ed.  9781665927253    $10.99

Friendship, self-confidence, and the physically demanding art of Chinese lion dancing are the focuses of this engaging debut graphic novel by Australian author Tse. Skinny, short, glasses-wearing Wei grew up idolizing his father, a champion lion dancer. After his dad’s sudden death, Wei abruptly quits, only to return two years later after a chance encounter re-ignites the tween’s passion. Wei initially struggles to keep up with the Southern Phoenix Junior Team. Worse still, he discovers that school bully (and his former dance partner) Hung is the star. The ex-friends constantly argue while preparing for several upcoming Lunar New Year performances. Tempers flare, and dancers are pushed to their limits, culminating in one difficult show that forces the students to work together and reconsider the team dynamics. Tse’s action-packed, manga-style art shows how grueling yet exhilarating lion dancing can be while deftly explaining its technical and cultural aspects. Hard work, dedication, and collaboration are ultimately rewarded, and Tse even manages to humanize Hung’s behavior. Hand this to readers who enjoy sports/martial arts–adjacent stories. MICHELLE LEE

Born Naughty: My Childhood in China
by Jin Wang and Tony Johnston; illus. by Anisi Baigude
Primary, Intermediate    Schwartz/Random    112 pp.
5/24    9780593563618    $16.99
Library ed.  9780593563625    $19.99
e-book ed.  9780593563632    $9.99

Wang tells of her early life sharing a tiny mud house in Non Ba Zi, a remote village in Inner Mongolia, with her mother, father, and two younger brothers. Episodic stories offer glimpses of everyday experiences that center shifting seasons, child-pleasing details, and tight family bonds. From planting potatoes in spring, enduring frightening thunderstorms in summer, starting school for the first time in fall, and huddling inside with lambs in the freezing winter, each anecdote is matched by Baigude’s lively black-and-white illustrations. Risking trouble over tearing her clothes, eight-year-old Jin races to climb to the top of a tree to defeat a teasing boy. With a strong sense of adventure, she relishes the chance to take a trip with her father to fill a large tank with water, a chore shared by all villagers. Jin displays profound gratitude toward nature and respect for elders throughout the narrative. Amid humorous depictions of childhood joys are realities of the hardships of having little food and water, no electricity, and limited access to healthcare. When Jin suffers a life-threatening dog attack, she is nursed to health by her mother’s use of folk medicine. Reinforcing the strong sense of place, information about Chinese calligraphy, superstitions, and New Year’s traditions are included. This concisely written and heartwarming memoir resonates with childlike wonder and optimism. Appended with authors’ notes (placing the story in 1982) and an illustrator’s note. KRISTINE TECHAVANICH

From the January 2025 issue of Notes from the Horn Book.

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