In the Park

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

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. Apr.

Children's Literature - Susan Hepler

In bright bordered cut paper collage illustrations, readers meet Xiao Ming and his mother who go for a walk in the park. As they notice signs of spring, they use sticks to draw Chinese characters in the earth that represent words associated with the season: fruit, nest, stream, umbrella and others. The incredibly complex system of Chinese writing is hinted at as Xiao Ming's mother explains that the symbol for nest is three squiggly lines atop two other symbols, one which means field and another which means tree in the field which translates to "fruit tree". Endpapers are decorated with a kind of picture glossary: a literal picture, a character, its English meaning, and the Chinese word it represents, plus its pronunciation. This book joins two previous titles, At the Beach and In the Snow. While the story stands on its own as a gentle seasonal appreciation, its purpose is to make readers aware of the beauty of Chinese writing; it would be useful in social studies and art curriculum development as well.

School Library Journal

Gr 2-4This 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.Margaret A. Chang, Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts

Kirkus Reviews

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)