Roses Sing on New Snow: A Delicious Tale

When the governor of South China visits the New World, recent immigrant Maylin creates a special dish for him, and when Maylin's lazy brothers try to take credit for her hard work, they are promptly found out.

Grade 1-3-- Each and every day of the year Maylin cooks in her father's restaurant in a turn-of-the-century Chinatown. The restaurant is renowned for its fine food, but Maylin has never heard the praise, because her father tells everyone that his two sons are the chefs. When the governor of South China comes to town, each Chinese restaurant is invited to send its best dish for a banquet. Maylin's creation, Roses Sing on New Snow, is of course the governor's favorite. When he asks the two brothers to re-create it for him so he can take it home, they are unable to do so. Maylin is then brought in--and the story could end here, with the men getting their just deserts. Instead the young woman says hers is a New World dish that cannot be re-created in the Old. To prove her point she and the governor cook the same dish, side by side, and the results differ greatly. If the logic seems to falter here and the story does not quite hold together, the watercolor illustrations and layouts are a veritable feast, with many delights. Rich in browns and terra cottas, set upon white, they are at times contained within rectangles, at others within trapezoids. Sometimes comically drawn figures cross the page. Perspective changes from a crow's-eye view above Chinatown to a closeup of the governor's dragonlike nose and eyes. --Diane S. Marton, Arlington County Library, VA
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.

The Canadian author of Tales from Gold Mountain (1991) tells another story about the Chinese-American experience. While Maylin does the cooking for her family's Chinatown restaurant, her greedy father and two fat brothers take all the credit. When her specially prepared dish, ``Roses Sing on New Snow,'' is served to the visiting governor of South China, he asks the brothers to show him how it was made. They fail miserably; and even when Maylin is summoned and the governor works beside her in order to learn her secrets, the food he prepares is inferior to hers. ``If you and I sat down with paper and brush and black ink, could we bring forth identical paintings?'' Maylin asks, winning a reputation for wisdom as well as for cooking. Chan, a native of Hong Kong, makes a fine debut with his carefully researched watercolors, setting the story early in this century; evocative with period detail, they nicely convey the story's drama and humor. A satisfying variant on a theme that appears in many cultures. (Picture book. 4-8) -- Copyright ©1992, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.