LITTLE PEAR by Eleanor Frances LattimoreIndieBound Description: Little Pear is a young boy who lives in a small village in China. Although his story takes place long ago, he is much like any little boy today--always on the lookout for excitement and adventure!
Little Pear is just looking for fun, but he has a knack for finding trouble without even trying! Join him as he stows away to the fair in a wheelbarrow full of vegetables, nearly flies away on a kite, has a mishap with a firecracker, and is rescued from the river by a houseboat family.
My Thoughts: I really enjoy and find the Little Pear books quite charming. But I hesitated to feature it here as it was one of the books I had a slight love/hate relationship with. As sweet as these books are, in my youth I was annoyed that these were the only kind of Asian books available--ones that showed Chinese as pig-tailed men with rickshaws. However, upon reflection, I don't feel that this is a fault of the book. No one book is suppose to be representative of a culture and there is definitely a place for this one. But I beseech you, do not let this be the ONLY Asian/multicultural book in your collection. This book, as I said, is lovely, but kids need to read other more contemporary ones as well as this one to begin to have a true understanding of Asian culture. (Ok, off soapbox now!)