Eat, Read, and Be Mommy

For Christmas, I promised my 15-year-old one more book when I found the right one; I also promised my (now) 10-year-old one more graphic novel when I found the right one. I’m still working on the one for the 15-year-old, but I finished Jing Jing Tsong’s Fake Chinese Sounds on Thursday and decided it would be the perfect graphic novel to join our household collection. (I’d consider it for my 15-year-old’s birthday, only she’s getting increasingly picky about the art in such cases, and I don’t think this would so much appeal to her.)

Fake Chinese Sounds is two things, really; it’s a novel about generational female relationships, despite language barriers, and it’s a novel about speaking up and dealing with racism. Mei Ying’s relationship with her Nai Nai is fantastic, and the way their relationship influences their interactions with Mei Ying’s mother is also a positive thing. The kind of racism Mei Ying deals with in school, on the other hand, is made even more frustrating by Mei Ying’s teacher’s reaction, and when you add the innocently-meant-but-still-racist comments she deals with in life’s everyday passing encounters, you have a 5th grader with a serious weight on her shoulders. How she finds her voice–and how it plays out with the kids who are bothering her–makes for great reading.

I will say that the color scheme and artistic style Tsong uses is less friendly to 45-year-old eyes; the font is sometimes awfully small, and the pages with less defined panels are sometimes slightly confusing. The art works with the story, however, and you can’t have everything, right? If you’re looking for a good graphic novel for upper elementary school through high school, you should definitely check this one out.