A tall portrait layout might have been the natural choice for Noodles on a Bicycle, with its depictions of bicycling demae (deliverymen) who balance gravity-defying towers of trays and bowls of soba noodles as they move through the streets of Tokyo. Instead, Zhang opted for a square trim, which infuses her illustrations with a sense of stability. This design choice and its impact on her compositions immediately establish Zhang’s “excellence of pictorial interpretation of story” (Caldecott Medal criterion #2), which aligns with how Maclear’s accompanying text hinges not on a climactic scene of a toppling tower of trays, but instead on the confident, absolute competence of the demae. In this story these men are not clowns providing cheap laughs with slapstick, bumbling, bicycle crashes. They “...are artists. Architects. Tough talkers. Speedy spinners. But mostly they are acrobats,” and Zhang’s art, held in the steady solidity of the square trim, conveys their dignity and the pride they take in their work.  

In another inspired design move, front and back endpapers include captioned black-and-white photographs from 1937 and 1959, respectively, showing actual demae bicycling while balancing their impressive towers of trays and bowls. These paratextual images frame the illustrations in the book proper, lending them credibility, even when the height of the balanced stacks of trays seems impossible. Furthermore, when combined with backmatter content and visual cues in characters’ style of dress and older-model cars, the archival photographs also position this delivery method as a practice of the past worth remembering and honoring. Zhang’s use of ink and gouache paints, rather than digital media, thus powerfully achieves excellence in “appropriateness of style of illustration to the story, theme or concept,” (Caldecott Medal criterion #3) as she makes the most of the mediums’ back-to-basics utility in her compositional choices. 

For example, in a spread showing the sobaya chef making various kinds of noodles for the demae to deliver, Zhang creates thin red panels inked with black outlines to divide one part of the scene into a vertical stack of pictures showing the sequence of steps involved in cutting the noodles and preparing the broth. And throughout the book, she also displays “excellence of execution in the artistic technique employed,” (Caldecott Medal criterion #1) with energetic, calligraphic brushstrokes that infuse vitality and movement into figures and objects, and with a balance of warm and cool colors enlivening the setting and characters.  

Speaking of characters: while the demae, the chef, and many other people in the book are adults, Maclear’s text is delivered almost entirely in a childlike, first-person-plural voice. Zhang interprets that collective voice through depictions of a group of children who act like a proverbial Greek chorus as they follow the demae through the city, marveling at their feats. Readers are included by implication, inviting us to align ourselves with lines such as, “When the deliverymen cycle through the neighborhood, we want to see them. We want to be them.” Nine children of various ages are depicted on this quoted spread, six watching as three others “give it a try” and attempt to balance trays of bowls as they bicycle in a circular series of illustrations around the spread. Alas, “crash!” reads the culminating word of this scene, their tower falling to the ground. The episode fulfills the old adage that imitation is the best form of flattery, and it also contrasts the children’s lack of skill with the demae’s astonishing abilities. In Zhang’s joyful art, this isn’t a tragic happening, either — she shows the children smiling while they look at the fallen, but intact, bowls. 

A just-right twist in Maclear’s text reveals that the central demae character whom the children so admire is “Papa” to six of them. He returns home to them and “Mama” with bowls of soba, and they sit down on cushions around a low table to share their meal. The visual perspective of this cozy scene positions readers as though we were standing nearby, looking over the table. This vantage point underscores the power of Maclear’s use of the first-person plural, as words and pictures work together and seem to invite us to join the family for supper. 

Then suddenly on the antepenultimate page, Maclear switches to the first-person singular when Papa comes to say goodnight to his children: “I can tell he’s tired. Bone-tired. But he tucks me in with a kiss” (emphasis added). This shift is at once startling in its interruption of collective inclusivity and effective in its intimate portrayal of a single child’s empathy and affection for a weary, beloved parent.  

“Who is talking?” asked my seven-year-old, Zachary, when I read this book with him and we reached this page. 

“I don’t know,” I said. “Who do you think?”  

Zachary pointed to the child closest to Papa in this illustration, barely visible under the blankets shared with three siblings in the bed. “But I don’t know which kid it is from the other pictures,” he said. 

We flipped back through the pages, stopping at the one when Papa comes home. 

“That one,” Zachary said, “with the pink squares on her dress.” The child Zachary identified is the first to hug Papa, the pattern on her dress a visual echo of the stacks of trays that he has balanced throughout his workday. 

We continued flipping back through the pages and found this same child standing apart from the rest of the family when her Papa returns, and then discovered her as the one who held the stack of trays aloft when the trio of children attempted, and failed, to imitate the demae at the middle of the book. 

“It’s definitely her talking,” said Zachary, “because she’s always doing the most.” I had to agree with his logic. And in that agreement, I came to an even deeper appreciation of Zhang’s “excellence in delineation of...characters,” (Caldecott Medal criterion #4) as she both honored the text’s inclusive use of the first-person-plural narrative through her depiction of a group of children and subtly highlighted the actual individual speaker revealed at book’s end. In that subtlety, Zhang also achieves the 5th Caldecott criterion, “excellence of presentation in recognition of a child audience,” as she trusts child readers to follow the twists and turns of this quiet story as it wends its way through a distinctly Japanese slice of life from the past, bringing it home to an individual child character. 

In sum, Zhang had a lot to balance on her illustration-plate as she approached Maclear’s text, which is distinguished in its own right. Though the committee is not supposed to consider the text’s achievement in its deliberations, in looking at how Zhang’s work to interpret it stacks up against the five Caldecott criteria, they would do well to commend her in delivering a picture book to be savored. 

[Read The Horn Book Magazine review of Noodles on a Bicycle]