NewBooks

Exploring Chinatown:
A CHILDREN'S GUIDE TO CHINESE CULTURE

A Parents' Choice Honors Award

By Carol Stepanchuk, Illustrated by Leland Wong

$22.95

Would you like to know why dragons parade for the Chinese New Year? Or where to buy mooncakes and lichis? Do you want to visit an herb store? Or have dimsum for lunch? Would you like to write in Chinese? Or create a traditional painting? Or, maybe, to learn to play Chinese chess?
Come along on a trip to discover Chinese culture. You’ll learn about family, religion, celebrations, music, food, martial arts, and more. You’ll discover how Chinatowns came to be, and how today’s lively neighborhoods are home to culture and traditions more than 2,000 years old. Welcome to Chinatown!
This is a book for kids, families, and teachers who’d like to get more out of their visit to Chinatown than an “I escaped Alcatraz” t-shirt or oversized pencil. It’s a guide to what makes Chinese culture, well, “Chinese.” It covers almost everything, from how to order in a restaurant, and what not to do with chopsticks, to how to write characters in Chinese and how to make potstickers. It tells about herbal medicine shops, temples, and tearooms. It explains musical instruments, the designs on dishes and paintings, and the costumed characters in the New Years’ parade. It describes traditional holidays, how people celebrate and what they believe. More, it shows how, and why, North American Chinatowns were established, and why these proud, lively and vital communities exist today.

A book for ages 10 and up.

Hardcover, 64 pages, full color, bibliography, index, 2002, ISBN 1-881896-25-0, LC 2001036661

:Carol Stepanchuk is a writer, multicultural educator, and author of Red Eggs and Dragon Boats: Celebrating Chinese Festivals and Mooncakes and Hungry Ghosts: Festivals of China. She lives with her family in Michigan.
:
Leland Wong was born and raised in San Francisco's Chinatown. He works as an artist, screen printer, and photographer in the Asian-American community of San Francisco. His works have been widely published and have been exhibited internationally.

Exploring Chinatown is a wonderfully presented and very highly recommended introduction to Chinese-American history for young readers and an ideal addition to school and community library collections.
—Children's Bookwatch, June 2002
Stepanchuk does a fine job of presenting Chinatown as a vibrant community, ever-changing with each new influx of Chinese immigrants from all parts of the world.
—Asian American Perspectives, National Association for Asian and Pacific American Education, April-June 2002

Chock full of clear, hard-to-find information on Chinese culture, this attractive guide will supplement multicultural studies and fill a gap in most libraries.
—Booklist, 8/01/02

A fine introduction to Chinatown and Chinese culture.
—School Library Journal, September 2002

A resource every school library should have.
—Children's Literature, August 2002

In addition to being a lively, fun and educational package for children, the book offers a fascinating glimpse of Chinese traditions to the armchair traveler who wishes to learn more about the culture, and even to third generation Chinese-Americans who may find themselves learning about aspects of their culture such as the meanings of colors in the Beijing opera and how to use an abacus.
—Honolulu Star-Bulletin, September 17, 2002

WOW! Carol Stepanchuck has done it again. Finally, a readable book for youngsters that covers the unique culture of Chinatowns in the American context."
—David Lei, Chinese-American Performing Arts Foundation

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