Asia in the Heart, World on the Mind

This was originally posted at Into the Wardrobe on May 1, 2009. "Sixteen-year-old Emily Wu is a good daughter, good student, good artist, and good friend. She works hard at school and in the Chinese restaurant she helps her parents run. But her life, which once seemed as sweet as the bao zi dumplings she and her mother make together, now feels stifling. Just as her paintings transform a canvas, Emily wants to create a new self. Then Nick, a sexy transfer student, asks her out. His kisses and the other girls' envious glances give Emily a thrilling, disconcerting new vision of herself, so different from the one she sees in the eyes of her parents and friends. Which Emily is the real Emily?" Happy Asian Pacific American Heritage Month! This month, Into the Wardrobe's reviews and interviews will be celebrating Asian and Asian American children's and young adult books and their authors and illustrators. So I hope you'll stop by often to join the conversation on As...

This was originally posted at Into the Wardrobe on November 15, 2008. The AMAZING Paula Yoo is the author of the young adult novel Good Enough . In this very enjoyable read, honor student and violin player Patti Yoon shares her worries, uncertainties, frustrations, fun, hopes, and dreams during her senior year in high school. (Click here for my review of Good Enough . I thought it was SO GOOD!) Paula is also the author of the children’s non-fiction picture book, Sixteen Years in Sixteen Seconds: The Sammy Lee Story (illustrated by Dom Lee). Paula holds a B.A. in English (cum laude) from Yale University, an M.S. in Journalism from Columbia University, and an MFA in Creative Writing from Warren Wilson College. She is a TV drama screenwriter and her TV writing credits include NBC's "The West Wing," FOX’s "Tru Calling," and The CW’s "Hidden Palms." She has taught English and music and written for The Seattle Times, The Detroit News, and PEOPLE magazine...

This was originally posted at Into the Wardrobe on October 27, 2008. How to Make Your Korean Parents Happy 1. Get a perfect score on the SATs. 2. Attend Korean church every week, no matter what. 3. Don't talk to boys. (They will distract you from your studies.) 4. Get into Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Cornell, Dartmouth, Columbia, Brown, Penn, MIT, Stanford, University of California at Berkeley, Smith/Mount Holyoke/Bryn Mawr/Wellesley. Then get into Harvard or Yale Law School and/or Harvard or Yale Medical School. 5. Become a Korean doctor. When all else fails, marry a Korean doctor. In the fusion story Good Enough by Paula Yoo , Korean American Patti Yoon guides us through her struggle to be a P.K.D (Perfect Korean Daughter). Patti is in her senior year of high school and the pressure is on to ace all six of her AP classes, get at least a score of 2300 on the SATs (2400 being the perfect score), become concertmaster of the Conneticut All-State High School Orchestra for the fo...

This was originally posted at Into the Wardrobe on June 6, 2008. David Yoo's Girls for Breakfast was hard for me to read. Not because it's a bad novel. It's a good novel. It's funny and well written. But I think it's also sad. In fact, Girls for Breakfast depressed me. Korean American Nick Park moves to Renfield, Connecticut just in time for the third grade. He is the new kid in Crying Stream Elementary - all the other kids know each other already - and the only Asian student. He has absolutely no friends for almost a year and I think this traumatizes him for life. Nick becomes obsessed with fitting in and being accepted. Nick lies to get his peers to start paying attention to him. He tells Will, Mitch, and Paul, three other boys in his grade, that he is a kung fu master and they beg him to teach them kung fu. Nick teaches Will, Mitch, and Paul martial arts moves he makes up and becomes friends with them. He even starts believing that he is a true kung fu master ...

This was originally posted at Into the Wardrobe on June 3, 2008. It is an honor to host Mitali Perkins at Into the Wardrobe. Mitali is the author of the middle grade novel Rickshaw Girl and the young adult novels The Not-So-Star-Spangled Life of Sunita Sen , Monsoon Summer , First Daughter: Extreme American Makeover , and First Daughter: White House Rules . Mitali is also the author of several short stories and several non-fiction works. She is an excellent writer and a very nice person! And now presenting... my interview with Mitali Perkins! :o) What was it like writing First Daughter: White House Rules ? Did you have "typical" writing days or writing rituals? I wrote under deadline as I signed the contract for the books before they were written, which meant I had to be stern with myself. I forced out 2000 words a day to finish the draft. And when that was done, I needed a couple of writing retreats away from home to revise and finish the story. You studied political s...

This was originally posted at Into the Wardrobe on May 25, 2008. Meet sixteen-year-old Sameera Righton, aka Sparrow, the likeable and very interesting main character of the First Daughter books. Sameera was born in Pakistan and was adopted by an American political family. She grew up as a diplomat's daughter, in communities where people from different cultures and races mingled without much fuss. She is sophisticated and articulate, fierce and opinionated. Sameera is an aspiring journalist and is well on her way to fulfilling her dream of becoming a writer. She has a very popular blog, www.sparrowblog.com , that is read by powerful people in America and by people all over the world. And her dad, James Righton, is now the president of the United States. (By the way, I highly recommend you check out that link! Sparrowblog really exists as a character blog for the First Daughter books. How cool is that?! :o) On the site, Sameera dishes about the real US presidential candidates and ...

This was originally posted at Into the Wardrobe on May 20, 2008. "Joyce stepped back to the mirror and pulled out two sheets of tissue from the dispenser on the counter. She leaned forward, raising her tissue-swathed index fingers to her face. The huge zit pulsed with pain, but she held her breath and gave it. One. Last. Push. Eye-rolling, teeth-clenching, nausea-inducing, searing pain flooded her body, but in the mirror, Joyce could see the beginnings of a white nugget like a tiny grain of rice oozing out from under her skin along with pus-streaked blood. Joyce gasped and watched with revolt and glee as the alien seed emerged from the mother ship that was her temple. She got it." That is part of the perfect beginning to a novel about the different images of beauty and society's preoccupation with them. We are introduced to Korean American Joyce Park through an opening chapter where she is obsessing over a zit because she wants to look her best when she asks her very po...

This was originally posted at Into the Wardrobe on May 16, 2008. I am thrilled to interview the funny and fabulous Cherry Cheva, author of the great and very hip fusion story She's So Money . :D You are a writer for the Fox animated TV series Family Guy. What made you decide to write young adult fiction? Can you tell us about your road to publication as a writer for teens? I actually sort of fell into it—I mean, when I was a kid I always thought it would be cool to write a book, but then I was focused on getting into TV writing for so long that I didn't really think about it seriously until my agent had another client who was doing a book-related project. He asked if I wanted to give it a try, and I was like hell yes! But if you count the road to getting my job on Family Guy, which no doubt helped me land the book deal in the first place, the story is much longer, involving moving to LA and getting a series of assistant jobs while writing spec scripts and trying to find an ag...

This was originally posted at Into the Wardrobe on May 16, 2008. Thai American Maya Naravadee is an obedient daughter to her parents and a great older sister to her brother Nat. (Family is number one for Maya!) She works really hard at her family's restaurant, Pailin Thai Cuisine. She's a high school senior who's always gotten straight As. She's even a student tutor. Maya is the "smart chick," a "good girl." (Hahahahahaha, another protagonist I can relate to.:o) ) When Maya's parents attend a wedding and go to a trade show out of town, Maya is in charge of the family restaurant for five days. She has everything under control until she encounters two difficult customers who threaten to contact the Health Department. That night, Maya goes straight home after the dinner shift, too tired from the difficult customers to do the usual restaurant cleanup. Unfortunately, the angry customers do contact the Health Department, and when the Health Inspector...

This was originally posted at Into the Wardrobe on May 3, 2008. May is Asian Pacific American Heritage Month. I want to honor it by celebrating all things Asian American and by reading Asian American children's and young adult literature - particularly Fusion Stories . The Year of the Rat , a semi-autobiographical novel written and illustrated by Grace Lin, follows a year (one Chinese New Year to the next) in the life of Pacy, a young Taiwanese American. The Year of the Rat is the first year of the Chinese twelve-year cycle and therefore it symbolizes new beginnings. The Year of the Rat is the time to make a fresh start and to change things. And Pacy does experience important changes during the Year of the Rat: her best friend Melody moves away, there's a new boy who is the only other Asian in her elementary school (aside from her sister Ki-Ki), her favorite cousin Clifford gets married, and she starts doubting her dream to become a writer and illustrator. Pacy does not like ...