A Box Can Be Many Things

Rain Dragon and I have been reading, A Box Can Be Many Things by Dana Meachen Rau and illustrated by Paige Billin-Frye

which caused this to happen:

and this:

I thought making the box car made me super parent of the day, but then the Sasquatch came up with... box helicopter!

the propeller really spins!

Luckily, Rain Dragon loves them both and when she is not in them, she makes sure they are always parked safely:

Though she has requested a rocket ship, next...

this week in our garden

The pink flamingo watching over Rain Dragon's garden was deemed not-child-friendly as she kept trying to pull it up from its metal legs. To make up for its disappearance (and to her great joy), we got her some new garden ornaments:

a hummingbird of her choice

and a dragon that I could not resist getting

However, after installing them, Rain Dragon was not quite satisfied. She insisted that the garden needed  something else.

Specifically, the yellow flower ornament that was in the vegetable garden:

She knew it would look much better in her garden:

And it did!

on my desk monday

It's the proofs for Ling and Ting:Twice as Silly! Yes, the 3rd Ling and Ting book is really coming!  I have some fun ideas for the book launch, so stay tuned!

fortune cookie friday

"If you pay peanuts, you get monkeys."
- Chinese Proverb

this week in our garden

Old Mr. Rabbit!

You have a mighty habit

of jumping in our garden 

and eating all our raspberries!

(though to be fair, I think it's really the birds eating them)

on my desk monday

I'm finally cleaning up the studio--out of necessity-- and I found the Tenacre Country Day School's catalog which the lovely librarian Esther Frazee sent me a long time ago! I'm so embarrassed I never responded (I had a really bad reader mail problem and didn't answer anything for over a year--but I've caught up...mostly!)

The catalog features Tenacre's  mural of Where the Mountain Meets the Moon!

I'm so honored (and very sorry I didn't acknowledge the awesome of this earlier!) Belated thanks, Tenacre school!

fortune cookie friday

"The harder you fall, the higher you bounce."
- Chinese Proverb

first time at the brimfield fair

So I've been in New England for most of my adult life and I had never gone to the famous Brimfield Fair. And I've always wanted to go! So last week, I played hokey from  work and spent the morning there.

And what a lot of stuff! It's like every New England's grandmother's attic emptied! Crazy!

There was a lot that I loved but could never fit in the car:

I always wanted a card catalog!

and this would've looked awesome in our garden, don't you think?

There were many chinoiserie  knick-knacks which I couldn't decide if I was charmed by or offended:

And then there were things I actually considered but couldn't afford. Even though you might think the Brimfield fair is a gigantic yard sale, I found the prices rather high. I found out later that most people expect you to bargain with them:

I really wanted to have these for our yard!

this was so sweet and Rain Dragon LOVEs merry-go-rounds

And while I didn't take home this Elephant sign:

I thought it would look neat in my studio

I did take home an elephant!

this week in our garden

Rain Dragon's small garden is still alive, despite her enthusiastic care:

However, she finds the lack of growth unsatisfactory and keeps sneaking to the vegetable garden:

and picking the green tomatoes:

She says she needs to feed them to the flamingo:

on my desk monday

Working on Ling & Ting Book 4!! Yes, another Ling and Ting book is coming. Don't miss Book 3, Ling and Ting: Twice as Silly which comes out this fall!

fortune cookie friday

"You must have crossed the river before you may tell the crocodile he has bad breath."
- Chinese Proverb

this week in our garden

So far, our vegetable garden seems to be thriving!

However, as much as the vegetable plants are growing, Rain Dragon's flower bed has remained quite bare. We finally gave up on any seeds sprouting and decided to plant some nursery seedlings instead:

We'll see if these can survive Rain Dragon's enthusiasm:

Learning about my own work

Recently, this link was shared with me (thanks so much, Susan!). It's an academic article titled, Negotiating Asian American Childhood in the Twenty-First Century: Grace Lin’s Year of the Dog, Year of the Rat, and Dumpling Days that was published in The Lion and the Unicorn. I'm quite honored! I think it's the first published academic writing about my work...this is definitely a milestone!

But not only is it a milestone,  the article is so gratifying to me as an author. It  encapsulates the things I was trying to do in my books (show that "....no Asian American child is exactly the same as another.") as well as things I hadn't thought of (Pacy's view of Audrey Chang  in Dumpling Days as a foil for that Battle Hymn of a Tiger Mom book).

However, it also brought up a viewpoint of my work that I had never thought about-- the "tourist-multicultural approach to ethnicity." It is true that Where the Mountain Meets the Moon is much more popular than the Year of the Dog; do readers prefer reading about an Asian of Asia vs an Asian-American?  Something I need to mull over and think about...

on my desk monday

On my desk is a completely awesome dragon scarf hand knit by the equally awesome author/illustrator Mary Newall Depalma:

It is a gift for Rain Dragon (though I am tempted to "borrow" it once the weather gets cold) and she adores it. She runs back and forth wearing it, pretending she is a flying dragon:

If you aren't familiar with Mary's work, you should  be! She is the  incredible author illustrator of  many beautiful books like Two Little Birds:

A Grand Old Tree:

Rain Dragon likes to ad lib with this book and includes celebrities like Bill Cosby, Maisy and Spot in the tree 

And Rain Dragon's favorite,  The Strange Egg:

and it gets her to eat a lot of oranges, too

Thanks so much, Mary!!!!

fortune cookie friday

"Stout men, not stout walls, make the stout city."
- Chinese Proverb

this week in our garden

This year, we had the foresight to hire a neighbor boy to water our garden while we were away.  We were rewarded by returning to thriving, green plots (vs the brown, withering plants of year past):

Rain Dragon is fascinated by the little green tomatoes:

And is rather discontent that her own garden remains so bare. We added a flamingo to make her feel a little better: