Jeanne M. LeeResenhas

Mu Lan is at her loom when she hears the Emperor's call to arms. She rides off to war in her father's stead, embarking on a journey of ten thousand miles that takes her away from home for ten years. Her courage and valor bring her to the Emperor's attention and to the Golden Court. When offered whatever she wishes as a reward, she asks only to go home. There she surprises her mother and father, sister and brother - but it is her comrades in arms who are most surprised of all.
The Song of Mu Lan is closely translated from an ancient text and echoes the rhythms of Chinese, which is here faithfully reproduced in original calligraphy by Chan Bo Wan, the artist's father. Jeanne M. Lee has rendered the panorama of characters in silken watercolors, providing a lush counterpoint to the spare, elegant text.

wonderful! THIS is how u respectfully translate a traditional folk story as a children's book!½

The glorious day when a young child is old enough to join her family in bringing gifts to their ancestors in the graveyard has finally arrived. Thanh-Minh goes with great anticipation and is greeted by an old, frightening looking lady name Ba-Nam. With her black teeth, Ba-Nam smiles and frightens Thanh-Minh. Thanh-Minh and her cousin wonder off to pick fruit from the trees in the graveyard as their family is offering the gifts when a sudden rainstorm comes upon them. Frightened by the darkened sky, rain and thunder, the children find comfort in Ba-Nam who shelters them through the night. As morning comes, the family is grateful for the children's safe return and thanks Ba-Nam for her help and Ba-Nam jokes that now that the storm has thrown all of the fruit off of the trees, the children do not have to wonder off to climb trees for the fruit. This book's message is not to judge people by their appearances. As Thanh-Minh thought Ba-Nam was terrifying, Ba-Nam ends up saving Thanh-Minh and her cousin.

This book was about a girl named Mei Mei, who was orphaned after her father passes away. She has no where to go and is alone until she is befriended by a village outcast named Po Po. I love the illustrations in this book because as the reader you can get a clear visual representation of the Chinese culture. As time goes on Mei Mei meets a slave that has escaped and followed her home, and they fall in love. I think this was a good book, but I don’t think I would read it to my future students unless we are discussing culture.

Bitter Dumplings is a story involving the struggles that the main character, Mei Mei, experiences many after the death of her Father. Not only does she experience poverty, being alone, mourning the loss of both of her parents, being shunned by her brothers, not being given a dowry or inheritance from her Father, having no friends, etc. The illustrations in this story are beautifully done and give readers visual representation of Chinese culture, along with the emotions and physical states of the characters. The old hunchback woman, named Po Po, took Mei Mei into her home and fed her. Readers are able to see the struggles that Mei Mei experienced living in poverty and being homeless, and they can gain a sense of what it is like to live in poverty. Every day, Mei Mei would care for the hunchback woman, and take the dumplings that they made to the village. One day, Mei Mei ran into hungry sailors coming to shore, and knocked the dumplings out of her buckets. A slave that the sailors captured followed her home, and eventually Mei Mei and Po Po let him hide at the house. The story turns into a love story, when Po Po led Mei Mei and the young man into her secret room, which had her old bridal gown, embroidered shoes, bedding, clothes, and a small pouch with gold and jade. The story ends with the line, "It was the beginning of a happy new life for them all". Young readers can also learn about history of Chinese cultures from this story.½

When a young girl named Mei Mei is left without a home after her father dies, she is taken in by an old woman that no one in the village ever talks to. The old woman, named Po Po, has a hunchback, and is shunned by the rest of the village due to her physical disability. Mei Mei finds hope and comfort in Po Po, and the two of them make a home where both of them are accepted. This book has beautiful illustrations and a beautiful story. The message of respecting everyone regardless of how they look is an important one that all children should know.

This was a delightful story of a woman named Mei Mei who has been left with nothing after the death of her father and the betrayal of her brothers. Left with almost nothing to sustain living, Mei Mei befriends a hunchback named Po Po. All she knows about the hunchback is that she is shunned by most people, and her house is said to be haunted. They spend time together and Mei Mei learns from the hunchback how to survive off the land. Eventually, a runaway slave escapes and finds the two women. They agree to hide him and keep him safe. Po Po plays off of the naiveté of the soldiers and scares them away with her appearance after they show up at her 'haunted house.' The story as a whole was really good, although the structure felt a little discombobulated and lengthy. Things seemed to be introduced at the last minute for the sake of conveniently bringing the story to it's conclusion. Even though one of the main characters of this story is a person with a disability, I still felt as if the only reason for that was to consider Po Po as a person with high value instead of the oppositely, conventional perspective of her. Although I completely agree with this sentiment towards Po Po, I still feel like her character could have been fleshed out a bit more in order to add a deeper sense of representation through her character. Altogether, I still very much enjoyed the story with the illustrations.

This book was too long for me to follow along easily along with the tiny font. The story begins when Mei Mei loses her father and her jealous brothers either sell or take all the inheritances and leave Mei Mei with nothing. She is alone and has no food to eat--she is barely surviving. Mei Mei sees an old hunchback woman who society has deemed an outcast and she asks her for food and helped with the chores. The book ends when a boy finds Po Po's bitter dumplings and searches to find her and they help hide him from the Emperor who enslaved him...It hints at marriage. The three are on a journey of growth.

With both her parents out of her life and her two elder brothers abandoning her, spoiled Mei Mei is forced to fend for herself when it comes to food and shelter. She comes across an old woman named Po Po with a physical disability; when she was younger heavy plank fell in her back causing her to become crippled. Mei Mei begins working for the lady by gathering ingredients to make dumplings and eventually selling them in the village for her. Both women have something in common; losing their dowry opportunity. When an old nslaved man comes to Po Po’s house to hide, she is the first to hint at them getting married. This book really ended abruptly, Po Po wants Mei Mei and the guy who ran a ay from the people h was inslaved to marry and in the end they basically look into each other’s eyes like they’ve been in love for a very long time. I don’t care for the story of the book my ch but I like how they explain how they make the dumplings.½

~Summary:
Mei Mei was a spoiled girl who had two brothers who were jealous of her privileges. When they were older, their father died as well. The two jealous brothers sold Mei Mei's future wedding dress to pay for the funeral. They also kicked Mei Mei to the streets to live homeless with no food. They took all of their father's inheritances and left Mei Mei nothing.
Mei Mei was alone. She battled the seabirds for fish that she ate. She grew weaker and weaker each and every day.
Mei Mei spotted an old hunchback women (Po Po) and asked for food. The old lady invited Mei Mei to her house. Mei Mei gave her food and in return, Mei Mei helped her with the daily chores.
When Po Po was younger, a plank from her father's boat fell on her back and damaged it. She gained a hunchback. Po Po's parents were humiliated and ignored her. She was treated like a servant and lived in the kitchen.
Mei Mei realized that she and Po Po had the same bitter experiences and she felt like fate had brought them together.
The book ends where a young boy recognizes Po Po's bitter dumplings that were dropped and he searches to find her. He finds Po Po and Mei Mei, where they help hide him from the Emperor's men who made him a slave. Po Po gives Mei Mei her old wedding dress after learning about what happened to hers.

~"People First Language" is where you, respectfully, put the person before the disability when writing and speaking. They are a human/person FIRST, and then their disability comes second. The disability does NOT define who they are or what they are capable of.

~Does this book go by the "People First" rule? -> Doesn't quite say she has a disability. We know the old lady has a physical disability after learning about the wood plank that hit her as a child and makes her get a hunched back.
Year book published: 2002
*The year has importance because "person first language" is a fairly new thing in the past decade or so.

~Is this a good book that explains a disability, correctly? -> no.

The connection with disability is the old woman Mei Mei has come to live with, she is old and frail, with a debilitating back injury that healed wrong. This book resonates with me as I have grown up with my mother having a life long disability since before I was born. The family is made aware of the other's needs and when to help - as they are able to do things, to wait for them to ask. It is a great book to bring children into so they may understand that disability is everywhere -and that they need to be compassionate.½

I enjoyed reading The Song of Mu Lan because I am a Mulan fan. Mulan was remembered for dressing/acting as a man to participate in battle because her father was too sick to go. I think when reading this to a class, they would also like to watch the movie to compare the difference between the book and the movie. I like the way the text is in the book- it is very straight-forward and gets to the point.

“Bitter Dumplings,” is a story about a girl named Mei Mei her father dies, and her siblings abandoned her and left her with nothing. She runs into an old hunchback woman who helps her because she knows how it feels to lose everything. Then at the end, Mei Mei helps a young boy who is a slave escape. The story shows how these three strangers find it in their hearts to help each other. They do not know what each other stories are, but they grow together throughout the story. They just want the best for each other, and they want to be helpful to each other. They all end up staying together, and it ended up being a happy life for the three of them. We can see how all of the characters grew because they helped each other and they made sure that they were taken care of.

I liked this because I saw the non Disney side of a strong woman who went to fight for her family. There is English and Chinese characters with each page of illustration which was interesting

I appreciated how short each story in this collection of stories was (for children's readability). And most impressively, each story relates to the next but can also be read individually.

In Vietnam, there is a special day call Thanh Minh, which means "pure and bright", and on this day, Vietnamese families visit the graves of their ancestors and pray and present gifts to the ancestors as an offering. For Nan, she is old enough to be able to visit her family's ancestors as she and her family visit the grave site. She meets the grave keeper name Ba-Nam, who is in charge of looking over the graveyard of the Vietnamese family's ancestors. At first, Nan is scared and turn off by Ba Nam due to her old deep wrinkle looks. When she and her cousin Keung go away from the graveyard to climb up trees and pick fruits off the trees, they get strand in the middle of the thunderstorm. As they make their way back to the graveyard, they encounter Ba-Nam, who safely comforts the two of them. They wait until morning to return to the graveyard and Nan learns to accept Ba-Nam despite her looks. In the end, no matter how a person looks, don't judge a person by their look because appearances can be deceiving. This theme is demonstrated in this book as Nan realizes that Ba-Nam is nice and helpful when she protects Nan from the thunder during a thunderstorm. Because the book is written based on the author's experienced, the reader can feel and experience the author's experience in the book through the characters, setting, plot, and theme. The cultural practice of Vietnamese people praying to ancestor is common in Vietnam because I know my parents have done that in Vietnam and since my parents emigrated to the USA during the Vietnam War, my parents don't practice the ritual anymore. My mother does when she visits Vietnam from time to time. Overall, I enjoy the book and I appreciate the Vietnamese cultural practice and beliefs of praying to ancestors.

I had mixed feelings about this book. I thought that sometimes the story was hard to follow. The writing itself was organized but the characters and plot was confusing. The illustrations were good and fit the style of the text to help represent the Chinese culture. This book was a good addition to my multicultural text set.

This interesting tale of a boy who is never quite sure if he is a boy or a butterfly uses brightly colored illustrations to inform the two perspectives - how does the world look from the view of a boy or a butterfly. My favorite line is about how others made fun of the boy because he could not see the ugly in things, only the beauty. A sweet, and peaceful read although may be a little confusing for very young readers.

Upon picking out this book, the title seemed more interesting than the content of the actual book was. Because of this, I gave it a relatively low score, and would not recommend it. This story comes from China, where they call the Milky Way the “silver river.”
One thing that I noticed about the book that I did not like was how boring and dull the Illustrations were. They lacked depth, detail, and barely had any color, which lead me to the fact that this book lacked creativity.
The man in the story is a weaver, who plays the instrument near his small house in the mountains with his only friend, the water buffalo. The Princess hears the lovely music and leaves her “heavenly home” in the clouds to follow the sound. The author writes, “She married the earthly young man and lived happy with him in his small house.”
Once the Princesses’ family realizes that she has left home, “to separate the pair forever, the Queen mother turned them into stars, one on each side of the river.” I liked this part of the book because this is when I realized where the idea of the Milky Way came into play. Before this part, I did not understand the meaning behind the title of the book. The Queen allows the couple to see each other once a year, and that is said to be the only time that we can see the Milky Way from earth, when the couple reunites and shines.
The main idea of this book is that true love always prevails, no matter the circumstance. I also think that the story focuses on the strength of love even when two people come from different economical backgrounds.

The ending to Bitter Dumplings confused me. Mei Mei is abandoned by her brothers after their parents die, forcing her to fend for herself. Then, she meets an older woman who carries a basket of rice and dumplings. Eventually, the two women become roommates, sharing a story of family abandonment. One day Mei Mei sees a fleet of ships with soldiers. When they see her and take her food, she runs home with one soldier following. It's after Mei Mei and the soldier hide while the older woman scares away the other soldiers. After watching the interaction between the two characters she gives Mei Mei the items in her trunk, which include a bridal gown. Perhaps the woman's gifts symbolize a new beginning for Mei Mei.

I really appreciate this book because it provides insight into a child's life who is deaf. This book focuses on looking at Lotus' strengths and seeing how her knack for rhythm and dance sets her ahead of her peers, even though she struggles with adversity. I love how this book depicts this culture. The colors are vibrant, and the designs are fun and different, and it provides a good look into this illustrator's view on Cambodia. For instance, there is a picture where Lotus is in the dancing hall and the walls are all red. The rich use of color and unique designs create a great image for me. This book shows how a passion ,in this case dancing, can rise above whatever struggles you may be facing. This would be the main idea of this book.

For Mei Mei, life seems as if it is just about to start. She is about to marry, but her father passes away and things changed drastically. She ends up alone and hungry with nowhere to go. She takes notice of the old hunchbacked woman, who is rumored to live in a house that is haunted, and decides to ask for food. When the woman keeps going, Mei Mei offers to work for food, and the woman lets her. Mei Mei ends up spending many nights at the old woman's house. When the Emperor's sailors ravage the village for food, Mei Mei hides. However, a young slave from the ship sees her and follows her back to the old woman's home. The old woman tells Mei Mei and the young slave to hide, and she scares the hungry men away from her home. After all of the commotion and fear has subsided, the old woman looks at Mei Mei and the young boy and is reminded of a time in her life that was taken away because of her injury. Her heart softens at the sight, and she offers Mei Mei a trunk that holds a beautiful bridal gown and her dowry.

I grew up loving fables such as Jack and Jill, the tortoise and the hare, Hansel and Gretel, etc. So, I am always interested in reading stories such as this from other cultures. This book in particular is a staple in my classroom. My World History students generally have their eyes glazed over and disinterested expressions when we reach the world religions unit in the curriculum. In an effort to make the lessons more interesting, I try to introduce some type of children's story. I Once Was a Monkey is a terrific way to introduce Buddhism. We discuss fables like the ones previously mentioned. Then, I read one or two of the stories in this book before teaching the history of Buddhism. More often than not, they ask me to read another at the end of the class.

I would recommend this book to anyone teaching ancient civilizations. The illustrations are extremely dark and often students comment on that fact. This is the perfect opening for discussing what was going on in India at the time that stories would be created which could be accompanied by such dark images.

An orphan girl with nothing befriends the shunned old village woman. They make and sell dumplings together. One day, the emperor's fleet of ships raids the village for food. A slave onboard recognizes that he has tasted them before and follows the orphan girl. He realizes he's back in his hometown that he was kidnapped from. When soldiers come to look for him, the old woman scares them off by pretending to be a ghost. Then, the slave boy and orphan girl get married. I don' t think I would ever share this book because it reinforces negative stereotypes - old people are ugly and creepy and that getting married is a happy ending (the orphan didn't even know the slave!). The only nice thing about this book was the illustrations.

The traditional Chinese folk legend of Mu Lan, first set down as a poem in the Tang Dynasty (618-907 CE), is retold in this beautiful bilingual picture-book by Jeanne M. Lee, Chinese-American artist and children's author. A gender-bending tale of filial devotion, it sets out the story of Mu Lan, a young woman who takes her elderly father's place in the emperor's army, determined to spare him the suffering and privation of military life. Spending ten years in the field, Mu Lan advances to the rank of general, but declines the rewards offered by the emperor, deciding instead to return home, where her status as a woman is revealed.

In "Writing Chinese America Into Words and Images: Storytelling and Retelling of The Song of Mu Lan," a fascinating article that appeared in the April 2006 issue of The Lion and the Unicorn, scholar Lan Dong (whom I see has now published a full-length study on the subject, Mulan's Legend and Legacy in China and the United States), compared this picture-book to Disney's animated retelling of the (arguably) same tale, concluding that while the Disney production was really an American story, in exoticized Chinese garb, Lee's work (like that of Maxine Hong Kingston, in her classic The Woman Warrior: Memoirs of a Girlhood Among Ghosts) was a genuine melding of Chinese and American traditions.

Although I found Dong's analysis insightful, as it concerned the cultural import of the various retellings of Mu Lan that she considered, and agree that this bilingual retelling is infinitely to be preferred to the Disney film, and its many print adaptations, I wasn't entirely satisfied with Lee's version, judged on its own merits. The watercolor illustrations, done by Lee herself, are gorgeous, as is the traditional calligraphy done by her father, Chan Bo Wan. But while I appreciated that the English translation here was faithful to the poetic form of the original, the text just wasn't that pleasing, as English. Song Nan Zhang, who chose to present his English translation in prose, in the similarly bilingual The Ballad of Mulan, made a wiser decision, I think, and if I could combine his text with Lee's illustrations, I would have my ideal "Mu Lan." As it is, I recommend this telling, together with Song Nan Zhang's, for all young readers interested in a more authentic retelling of this tale, particularly those who may only have encountered the Disney version up until now.