In the Park - Hardcover

Lee, Huy Voun

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0805041281 ISBN 13: 9780805041286

Publisher: Henry Holt and Co. (BYR), 1998

Synopsis

Spring has arrived and Xiao Ming can't wait to spend the day in the park with his mother. All around them are signs of the season: insects flying, leaves on the trees, and flowers in bloom. Xiao Ming's mother teaches Xiao Ming how to write the words for these things in Chinese by first drawing pictures of them.

Following the highly acclaimed At the Beach and In the Snow, In the Park is Huy Voun Lee's third book on Chinese character writing. The instructional text, written as a simple story, is complemented by exuberant, cut-paper art. And the steps to writing the ten Chinese characters taught in the story are reinforced on the endpapers. After a day in the park with Xiao Ming and his mother, young readers will be eager to try their own hand at drawing Chinese characters.

About this title

About the Author

Huy Voun Lee is the author and illustrator of At the Beach and In the Snow. Originally from Cambodia, Ms. Lee now lives in New York City.

Reviews

Grade 2-4AThis concept book follows the format of the artist's At the Beach (1994) and In the Snow (1995, both Holt). An excursion to an urban park in springtime provides Xiao Ming's mother another opportunity to teach him 10 Chinese characters. Each character is written at the beginning of the paragraph in which Mother explains the elements of the ideograph and connects it to the natural objects nearby. The pages are handsomely composed tableaux of people enjoying activities in the park. The cast is multicultural and multigenerational. The illustrations, built of plain or patterned cut-paper collages, shift in point of view. Each scene is set within borders that often feature decorative motifs relating to the characters under discussion. The characters and a pronunciation guide in standard Chinese are listed on the first and last pages. Peggy Goldstein's Long Is a Dragon (Pacific View, 1992), intended for older children and not so visually appealing, shows how to write characters. It is a better choice for an organized, logical explanation of Chinese ideographs. Lee's title should awaken interest in Chinese writing, but could stand alone as an example of the art of collage, or as a celebration of spring.AMargaret A. Chang, Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Harmony is the effect Huy achieves in her playful collage cutouts of blooming park scenes. As in At the Beach and In the Snow, Huy fluidly weaves a lesson in drawing Chinese characters into a mother-son outing. Young Xiao Ming, sporting a baseball cap, pulls his pigtailed mother excitedly through an expansive urban refuge. Nature has erupted into the colors of spring and there's much to see: families strolling, singing groups and chirping birds, an army of ants loaded with cargo, Rollerbladers, bikers and painters. Huy gracefully depicts the American melting pot in these double-spread pages framed with borders of soft colors that integrate silhouettes of elements from the text (ducks, frogs, raindrops). The Chinese character that Xiao Ming's mother is teaching him to draw introduces each spread: for example, the character for insects ("It looks like three bugs flying," remarks Xiao Ming) accompanies three bees in flight; three flowing vertical lines connote a stream. Huy uses an organic approach, exploring each word as mother and son come upon it in their travels; a strategy especially well suited to a written language in which art and life meet so naturally in the composition of its characters (a glossary flanks the tale). The park scenes are wonderfully diverse, and in the few spreads where mother and son are not visible, their running dialogue keeps them ever present. Ages 4-8.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

In her continuing series of books on writing Chinese characters (In the Snow, 1995), Lee beautifully executes paper-cut illustrations with a spring theme. Xiao Ming and his mother go to the park, where she teaches him some Chinese characters: The one for earth looks like a plant growing; chirp combines the characters for bird and for mouth; Xiao Ming describes the character for umbrella as looking like people under a big roof. The dialogue is fairly lifeless, but the pictures are rich with detail: Lee's use of pattern is masterly, and among the people she creates are a charming white-haired pair of elders, a couple expecting a child, and a person in a wheelchair. The written Chinese characters are clearly illustrated in the text and end papers, where pronunciation is provided. (Picture book. 5-9) -- Copyright ©1998, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Ages 4^-8. Youngsters who liked In the Snow (1995) and At the Beach (1994) will welcome the return of Xiao Ming and his mother, who once again blend the pleasures of the outdoor world with an introduction to Chinese characters. This time, the soft soil serves as the writing surface as Xiao Ming learns the character for the word earth ("It looks like a plant growing"), and his mother points out that adding the character for mouth to the one for bird produces the character for chirping. The paper-cut illustrations are both bright and spare, and each picture is tenderly framed in a simply embellished border that matches the subject of the page. Like its predecessors, this book teaches children some simple Chinese characters, but it also opens the way for children to look at their surroundings and to appreciate the different ways of conveying what they see on paper. Susan Dove Lempke

Edition details

• Publisher: Henry Holt and Co. (BYR)
• Publication date: 1998
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0805041281
• ISBN 13: 9780805041286
• Binding: Hardcover
• Illustrator: Lee Huy Voun
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 32