Children's Books about Chinese Food

How do you introduce your kids (picky eaters included) to new Chinese food in a fun, low-pressure way?  Read to them! Here are two of my favorite children's books about Chinese food that are sure to entertain both kids and adults, and might even make your tummy rumble!

For Young Readers (Picture Book):

 The Runaway Wok by Ying Chang Compestine (Penguin Dutton, 2011)

The Runaway Wok is the story of a poor peasant boy, Ming, who trades his family’s last eggs for a magic wok.  Soon the wok is galloping throughout Beijing stealing succulent dishes, toys, and money from the stingy but wealthy Li family, and depositing these goodies at Ming’s house. Ming’s family distributes the goods to the whole village, who then celebrate Chinese New Year together as the wok whisks the Li family out of town.  Parents will appreciate the author’s note about the Chinese New Year and recipe for Festive Fried Rice at the back of the book.  Kids will love the lively story and colorful illustrations.  If you like this book, check out Compestine’s The Runaway Rice Cake (2001), another Chinese New Year tale involving magic and food.

For Older Readers (Chapter Book):

 Dumpling Days by Grace Lin (Little, Brown, 2012)

In this sequel to Year of the Dog and Year of the Rat, heroine Pacy travels with her family to Taiwan to visit family and celebrate grandmother’s sixtieth birthday.  During the twenty-eight day visit, Pacy and her sisters share many new experiences: watching Chinese opera at a temple in Taichung, mailing postcards from the tallest building in Taipei, and sampling new foods at the night market.  In fact the entire book, as the title suggests, is full of food. Lin’s descriptions and illustrations of the new foods that Pacy tries will delight young and old alike: soft-skinned peach buns, steaming Chinese dumpling soup, crisp and sweet wax apples. The Lin sisters also experience Taiwanese culture through art classes that their mother has signed them up for.  These classes are initially a source of frustration for Pacy, who struggles with brush technique despite being “good at art” back in the United States.  The classes are a lens through which Lin depicts Pacy’s conflicted feelings about her Taiwanese-American identity--at times, the heroine feels like she doesn’t fit in and other times, she feels invisible (due to the language barrier), feelings that Lin resolves toward the end of the book.

In addition to Lin’s mouth-watering descriptions of food and her simple but poignant approach to cultural identity, I love the small illustrations that intersperse the chapters:  how to hold chopsticks (Chpt 2), instructions for making dumplings (Chpt 4), and a collection of all the different dumplings Pacy sampled (last page).  Also, your young reader will be tickled to see the small flipbook illustration of a crossing light on the corner of the each page. When you flip through the pages, the figure on the crossing light “walks” and the number counts down from forty to zero—brilliant!

If you like this book, check out Lin’s other books.  Themes of food run through her other chapter books, Year of the Dog and Year of the Rat, as well as her picture books, Dim Sum for Everyone, Bringing in the New Year, and Thanking the Moon.

What are your favorite children's books about Chinese food?