Uncle Peter's Amazing Chinese Wedding - Hardcover

Lenore Look; Yumi Heo

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0689844581 ISBN 13: 9780689844584

Publisher: Atheneum Books for Young Readers, 2006

Synopsis

Jenny's favorite uncle, Peter, is getting married, and everyone is happy happy -- everyone, that is, except Jenny. While her family runs about getting ready for the traditional Chinese wedding -- preparing for the tea ceremony, exchanging good-luck money called hungbau, helping the bride with her many dresses -- Jenny is crying on the inside. How is she supposed to still be Uncle Peter's number-one girl, with her new aunt Stella around? Maybe if she can stop the day's events from happening, he won't get married at all...
Mischievous kids will love following Lenore Look and Yumi Heo's feisty heroine from Henry's First-Moon Birthday in this charming story that also illuminates the many traditions of the Chinese wedding.

About this title

About the Author

Lenore Look is the author of Ruby Lu, Brave and True, an ALA Notable Book, as well as its sequels, Ruby Lu, Empress of Everything and Ruby Lu, Star of the Show. Her picture books include Love as Strong as Ginger, illustrated by Caldecott Honor artist Stephen T. Johnson; Henry’s First-Moon Birthday; and Uncle Peter’s Amazing Chinese Wedding, both illustrated by Yumi Heo. She lives in Hong Kong.

Reviews

Kindergarten-Grade 3–Jenny, who first appeared as an energetic big sister in Henry's First-Moon Birthday (S & S, 2001), is back, participating in her uncle's nuptials. The child loves being his special girl and is having difficulty with the idea of sharing him with a new aunt. Look perfectly captures the child's envy and jealousy as the bride becomes the center of attention. As the family gathers to celebrate, readers learn about many of the traditions associated with the ceremony, including bargaining for the bride, wearing red for good luck, and bed-jumping. The busy day has a sweet resolution as Stella chooses Jenny to release a box full of butterflies and thanks her for sharing her uncle. The child responds with a hug and welcomes the bride into the family. Heo's child-inspired illustrations contribute to the story's strong appeal with lively colors, perspectives, and details that accentuate both Jenny's feelings and the wedding traditions. A delightful invitation to learn more about Chinese traditions.–Maura Bresnahan, High Plain Elementary School, Andover, MA
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*Starred Review* K-Gr. 2. Rituals, both solemn and fun, once again form a backdrop for universal emotions about family and change in this companion to Henry's First-Moon Birthday (2001). Jenny's Chinese American family is attending the wedding of favorite cousin Peter, whose focus on the big day makes his possessive niece feel like "an umbrella turned inside out." Her sense of abandonment erupts in a stunt involving ceremonial tea leaves, but eventually it subsides through tender gestures from both bride and groom and the giddy excitement of participating. Among many kid-oriented activities, Jenny accompanies the groom to collect his red-silk-clad bride: "Two hundred years ago, he would carry her on his back. But today he is using his car." Such references to Chinese traditions emerge naturally throughout, as do allusions to what happens after the wedding (though the significance of things such as red-bean-and-tapioca "fertility soup" will puzzle most kids). Jenny's idiosyncratic voice is as distinctive as Heo's faux-naif mixed-media compositions, in which the artist's signature scatterings of patterns and symbols appropriately suggest the shower of rice (or, in this case, birdseed and butterflies) at a wedding's grand finale. For more on nuptial traditions, pull out Ellen Jackson's Here Come the Brides! (1998) and Gary Soto's Snapshots from the Wedding (1997). Jennifer Mattson
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Uncle Peter's Amazing Chinese Wedding

By Lenore Look

Atheneum/Anne Schwartz Books

Copyright © 2005 Lenore Look
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-689-84458-4

Chapter One

... here comes the bride! Amazing Stella, hair like unwoven silk, eyes like two black pearls, is dressed from head to toe in red red red to bring good luck. Dragons and phoenixes chase one another across her long, tall dress.

When Uncle Peter sees her, his face lights up like the aurora borealis and he reaches for her hand. I quick grab his other one and pull.

"Let's go," I say.

Stella changes into her dress for the banquet. It this were a hundred years ago, she would change into a hundred different dresses to show off her family's wealth; if this were two hundred years ago, she would have to change so many times that she wouldn't be able to eat.

While Grandpa is saying that Stella's a feast for the eyes, I feast on vegetables disguised as flowers, duck with skin like paper, and my favorite - long-life noodles, too slippery for chopsticks, but perfect to slurp from the edge of my plate. The cake has extra-creamy frosting, but my favorite is the wedding soup, a sweet broth of red beans and pearl tapioca. Fertility soup, my aunties whisper, good for making babies. Gulp. "Milk, please," I cough.

(Continues...)

Excerpted from Uncle Peter's Amazing Chinese Weddingby Lenore Look Copyright ©2005 by Lenore Look. Excerpted by permission.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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Edition details

• Publisher: Atheneum Books for Young Readers
• Publication date: 2006
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0689844581
• ISBN 13: 9780689844584
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 40