Quick Things You Need To Know:

• In addition to Raising Luminaries/Books For Littles (a Chinese-American organization), here are some more AAPI kidlit-focused organizations that focus on race (but unlike RL, these are mostly only race-focused, less on the intersection of AAPI + other targeted identities.)
  • Lee & Low Books (Boston-based kidlit publishers) Quality of engagement for books vary depending on the author.
  • Pragmatic Mom – Mia Wenjen is a Gen X Newton-based Chinese & Japanese American mom & kidlit blogger. Most of her work is fairly progressive although not quite as radically progressive, intersectional, and nitpicky as BFL, which is mostly a generational thing. Also less (no) cursing. And her book Sumo Joe is spectacular.
  • Tuttle Publishing: Publishers originated in both Vermont & Tokyo. Their books are consistently adorable, although most lean toward didactic non-fiction.
  • Mango & Marigold Press: (Formerly Bharat Babies) – Kids books about the South Asian experience, with many books centering on South Asian American experiences. Transparency: The founder, Sailaja Joshi, is one of my patreon-supporters, we’ve done a maker spotlight on her work, and I recently consulted with M&M on an upcoming children’s book.
  • Saffron Press: #OwnVoices South Asian Sikh publisher centering on inclusion, sustainability, and kindness. We’ve done a maker spotlight on the founder, Navjot Kaur, who has become dear to me as a friend collaborating in raising kind and courageous humans.
• We tend to evaluate a maker based on the first book we read by them – and that’s a mistake. Almost all of the makers below have at least one great book and a few duds.

2022 Update:

I’m no longer updating this list by hand. Here’s where I’m keeping an up-to-date list of #OwnVoices AAPI kidlit

How I find #OwnVoices AAPI makers

• See the #OwnVoices mainpage for more details on how I research & identify #Ownvoices authors.
• I’ve compiled most of these names based on the bios within book jackets as I’m processing new books. Since my note system includes manual tagging (ex #OwnVoices AAPI) I didn’t bother with finer details, but as I get time, I’ll include home countries, nationality, and cultural info.
• Most often for US-born & based authors, that’s left out of profiles, so the vast majority of these are US & Canadian makers

Systemic hurdles in searching for AAPI makers

• While there are lots of Asians publishing books in US kidlit, Asians are most often illustrators – not authors who get to drive the story. And within that – most Asians have been either forced by publishers to draw white characters (with anthropomorphic animals close behind to appeal to white audiences. Some just choose to, for whatever reason (cough cough internalized racism). In which case – are these really #OwnVoices books? That analysis is going to have to wait until I have time to sub-divide/rank this list.
• I’d also like to take this opportunity to point out how racism is integrated with tech. Trying to search for books by the names of Asian makers with traditional/Indigenous names, sites such as Amazon and Bookshop will return auto-corrected searches trying to twist these names into common English words. There usually isn’t even an option to click “I meant what I fucking typed” like when Google tries to correct a search. For example, it wasn’t until 2020 that Amazon allowed my to search for the work of Qin Leng without including the exact title of one of her books. To underline how ridiculous this is, Leng is a prolific illustrator who has contributed to over 25 well-known books in her career. If you want to find an semi-unknown author with a common last name (ex: Basia Tran), Bookshop will just toss search results with every fucking book remotely using the word ‘tran’ – completely ignoring the ‘Basia‘ from the equation. Which means if you want to search for more books by your favorite AAPI maker, you’re going to have to already know the exact titles of those books. Yay for more erasure of AAPI contributions to art and media! (This is a sarcasm.)
• Except for a few makers here, each name is accompanied by a popular book of theirs. This is mostly for my reference so I can quickly remember who is who. It’s not necessarily my favorite book of theirs, it’s just the one I remember them most by.
• Despite publishers calling in AAPI folks to draw white biographies – Notably missing from this list: ANY books about Grace Lee Boggs, Yuri Kochiyama, Mabel Ping-Hua Lee, Vincent Chin, Larry Itliong, and other notable biographies within the AAPI civil rights movement because publishers pay us so long as we fall in line (or cook tasty things), but never accept us in leadership roles. (Dang that pesky erasure!)
• There are no picture books in the US about K-Pop. I checked. I’m sad too. And there aren’t any books about AAPI music (outside classic music, yes we have Yo Yo) because…well when is the last time you saw us person allowed to take up space on a stage and get loud? YA DON’T. (Unless it’s K-Pop.)

Who is not included in this list:

• Authors whose work I haven’t had a chance to screen- makers whose work has been vanity & micro-press published usually aren’t available in my local library system, which means I can’t get my hands on them.
• Authors who create those low-quality basic filler books that say nothing new and waste readers’ time.

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Quick & Messy Book List:

In Alpahbetical-ish Order

These are all of the authors and illustrators whose identities I’ve been able to verify identify as American or Canadian Asian & Pacific Islander, members of the API diaspora living on Turtle Island, or native API makers working in their homelands (very popular Korean, Japanese, and Chinese books occasionally get translated into English and make it overseas). Unless otherwise noted, I’ve read at least one (often more) of their books. I wouldn’t necessarily recommend you go out and read them, as the vast majority of them are underwhelming. Just gonna throw these in here and add to the list when I can.

A

• Sandhya Acharya -10 Gulab Jamuns
• Rania Al-Abdullah – sandwich swap
• Gabrielle Ahulii – Pele Finds A home
• Jamel Akib – Bringing Asha Home
• Hannah Alkaf – The Weight of Our Sky
• Nabi Ali – All the way to the top
• Carl Angel – Lakas and the Manilatown Fish
• Samhita Arni– Sita’s Ramayana

B

• Hyun-joo Bae – New Clothes for New Year’s Day
• Ho Baek Lee – Be-Bim Bop!
• Bette Bao Lord – In the Year of the Boar and Jackie Robinson
• Jane Bahk – Juna’s Jar
• Saumiya Balasubramaniam – When I Found Grandma
• Rashi Bismark, MD, MPH – Finding Om
• Xanthe Bouma – Sand Warrior, Little Sid
• Thi Bui – A Different Pond

C

• Chiie Thao Cha – Dia’s Story Cloth
  
• Nhia Thao Cha – Dia’s Story Cloth
• Irene Chan – Baby Loves Green Energy!
• Ruth Chan – The Great Outdoors
• Nidhi Chanani – Pashmina
• Mimi Chao – In My World
• Alina Chau – The Nian Monster
• Julie Chen – When I Grow Up
• Jacqueline Chen – Chibird
• Ziyue Chen – Just Right Family, Mela And The Elephant
• Monique Chheda – Bindiya In India
• Jason Chin – Redwoods
• Marcos Chin – Ella
• Oliver Chin – Discovery of Ramen
• Kai Yun Ching – From The Stars In The Sky To The Fish In The Sea
• Cynthia Chin-Lee – Amelia To Zora
• Margaret Chiu Greanias – Maximillian Villainous
• Tina Cho – The Ocean Calls: A Haenyeo Mermaid Story
• Carolyn Choi – IntersectionAllies. Disclosure: I got a free copy of Intersection Allies from Dottir Press. I used it as an example to unpack ageism, which you can that in When Kidlit Authors Don’t Respect Kids – Adultism in Kidlit
• Susan Choi – Camp Tiger
• Yangsook Choi – The Name Jar
• Joey Chou – Ruby’s Chinese New Year
• Charlene Chua – Amy Wu And The Perfect Bao
• Aree Chung –  I’m only mentioning this maker because ‘Mixed’ is SO damaging and harmful and colorblind fallacy nonsense that I need you to understand how harmful it is. You can find that over in Mixed Race Babies Won’t Solve Racism. Despite his consistent attempts to normalize multiracial Asians, the rest of his work is, at best, forgettable.
• Yin Yang Compestine – Boy Dumplings. While on the surface most of her work is didactic and bland, and the less boring ones could just be read as ‘irreverent,’ when we examine her whole body of work and career,  Compestine is aggressively fat-phobic and uses opportunizes fatmisia throughout her work. Not recommended.
• Li Cunxin – Dancing To Freedom

D

• Songju Ma Daemicke – Cao Chong Weighs an Elephant
• Debasmita Dasgupta – Mina Vs. The Monsoon
• Mike Dutton – Food Truck Fest

F

• The Fan Brothers – Ocean Meets Sky
• Reem Faruqi – Lailah’s Lunchbox
• Greg Foley – Kat Writes A Song
• Gyo Fujikawa – Babies

G

• Susie Ghahremani – What Will Grow?
• Katrina Goldsaito – Sound of Silence
• U’ilani Goldsberry – A Is For Aloha
• Rukhsanna Guidroz – Leila in Saffron

H

• Bruce Edward Hall – Henry And The Kite Dragon
• Sheila Hamanaka – All The Colors Of The Earth
• Jenny Han – Clara Lee And The Apple Pie Dream
• Catherine Hernandez – I Promise
• Minfong Ho – Hush! A Thai Lullaby
• Amiko Hirao – Write To Me
• Felicia Hoshino – A Place Where Sunflowers Grow
• Yutaka Houlette – Fred Korematsu Speaks  Up
• Lillian Hsu – Dumpling Soup
• Rebecca Huang – Queen of Physics. Disclosure: Little Feminist Book Club (afflink) sent me a free copy of this book so I could critique it for an upcoming book box. (I like it, it passed.)
• Ying-Hwa Hu – Jingle Dancer

I

• Sanae Ishida – Ba-Chan the Ninja Grandma
• Melissa Iwai – Soup Day
• Nat Iwata – Sumo Joe

J

• Yoshiko Jaeggi – Monsoon Afternoon
  
• Mahak Jain – Maya
• Ji-Li Jiang – Magical Monkey King
• Anjali Joshi – Let’s Celebrate Diwali
• Kaylani Juanita – When Aidan Became A Brother
• Mike Jung – Unidentified Suburban Object (Mike’s also #OwnVoices Autistic!)

K

•  Anna Kang – We are (not) friends
• Amish Karanjit – A Dog Named Haiku
• Keiko Kasza – A Mother For Choco
• Navjot Kaur -Dreams of Hope
• Rukhsana Khan – Big Red Lollipop
• Khatami – Little Black Book
• Supriya Kelkar – The Many Colors of Harpreet Singh
• Aram Kim – No Kimchi For Me
• Jamie Kim – Where Are You From
• Jean Kim – Rabbit Moon
• Julie Kim – Where’s Halmoni?
• Soyeon Kim – You Are Stardust
• Jama Kim Rattigan – Dumpling Soup
• Taesoo Kim – Nova the Star Eater
• Violet Kim – If You’re Going On A March
• Joy Kogawa – Naomi’s Tree
• Uma Krishnaswami – Chachaji’s Cup
• Julia Kuo – Sound of Silence

L

• Remy Lai – Pie In The Sky
• Thao Lam – My Cat Looks Like My Dad
• Amelia Lau Carling – Mama and Papa Have a Store
• Dorina Lazo Gilmore – Cora Cooks Pancit
• Minh Lê – Drawn Together
• Dom Lee – Passage To Freedom
• Huy Voun Lee – Red, White, and Boom!
• Jean M. Lee – Bitter Dumplings
• June Jo Lee – Chef Roy Choi
• Keunhee Lee – The Journey Home
• Laura Lee – Cat Eyes
• Michelle Lee – Play With Me
• Milly Lee – Nim And The War Effort
• Suzy Lee – Shadows
• Vickie Lee – Ruby’s Chinese New Year
• Amy Lee-Tai – A Place Where Sunflowers Grow
• Qin Leng – Away
• Hilary Leung – Will Ladybug Hug?
• Julie Leung – Paper Son
• Stevie Lewis -Prince & Knight
• Joanne Lew-Vriethoff – Brave
• Grace Lin – The Ugly Vegetables
• Shao Wei Liu – Magical Starfruit Tree
• Sylvia Liu – A Morning With Grandpa
• Beth Lo – Auntie Yang’s Great Soybean Picnic
• Ginnie Lo – Auntie Yang’s Great Soybean Picnic
• Rich Lo – Father’s Chinese Opera
• Virginia Loh-Hagan – Nian The Chinese New Year Dragon
• Lenore Look – Alvin Ho (I’m only including her here preemptively to avoid the ‘What about Lenore Look?‘) Her work is reductive, excuses male toxicity, tokenizes Indigenous cultural symbols, and she excuses it with fragile ‘I just tell it like it is‘ without taking responsibility for showing kids how these actions are problematic or giving alternatives. AVOID.
• Ai-Ling Louie – Vera Wang
• William Low – Chinatown

M

• Jillian Ma – In My World. Just this one book is enough to turn me off this illustrator forever. Maybe her other books are fine. But ‘In My World’ promotes the ‘locked in’ myth that autistics have been trying to dismantle for decades. This is a clear example of impact over intent – and the impact of her work is harmful to autistics. I’m not going to blanket tell you to avoid her work, but be very careful cause this book is ableist AF.
• Kyo Maclear – Spork
• Debbi Michiko Florence – Jasmine Toguchi
• Ken Min – Benji the bad day and me
  
• Raakhee Mirchandani – Super Satya Saves The Day
  
• Ken Mochizuki – Water be my friend
• Carmen Mok – Grandmother’s Visit

N

• Il Sung Na – Snow Rabbit, Spring Rabbit
• Innosanto Nagara – A is for Activist
• Mai K. Nguyen – Pilu Of The Woods
• Sopaul Nhem – Half Spoon Of Rice

O

• Joowon Oh – Our Favorite Day
• Debbie Ridpath Ohi – Naked!
• Ruth Ohi – Ruth’s Tree
• Man One – Chef Roy Choi

P

• Tracy Packiam Alloway – The Perfect Project
• Jiyeon Pak – My Grandpa’s Chair
• Kenard Pak – The Fog
• Soyung Pak – Dear Juno
• Frances Park – Where in earth is my bagel
• Ginger Park – Where in earth is my bagel
• Linda Sue Park – Bee-Bim Bop!
• Dharmali Patel – That’s Not Fair
• Sanjay Patel – The Little Book of Hindu Deities
• Rajni Perera – Boy & The Bindi
• LeUyen Pham – A Piece of Cake
• Bao Phi – My Footprints
• Dow Phumiruk – Mela And The Elephant

Q

• Betty Quan – Grandmother’s Visit

R

• Gurleen Rai – Dreams of Hope
• Anushka Ravishankar – To Market, To Market!
• Amber Ren – Because
• Anthony D. Robles – Lakas And The Manilatown Fish
• Isabel Roxas – Let Me Finish
• Ching Yeung Russell – Moon Festival

S

• Aisha Saeed – Bilal Cooks Daal
• Nana Sakata – The Garden of Peace
• Jaspreet Sandhu – A Lion’s Mane
• Dan Santat – Drawn Together
• Charles Santoso – Ida Always
• Chris Sasaki – Paper Son
• Allen Say – Grandfather’s Journey
• Sunny Seki – Yuko-Chan and the Daruma Doll
• Anjali Shah – Kid Chef
• Anne Shen – Bad Girls
• Kashmira Sheth – My Dadima Wears A Sari
• Sheetal Sheth – Always Anjali
• Ellen Shi – School People
• Qian Shi – The Weaver
• Monte Shin – Mirror Play
• Simone Shin – Niko Draws A Feeling
• Shelly Shinjo – Ghosts for Breakfast
• Vivek Shraya – Boy And The Bindi
• Rina Singh – Diwali Lights
• Icy Smith – Half Spoon of Rice
• Jess X Snow – The Ocean Calls
• Meilo So – Noodle Magic
• Keum Jin Song – Rice From Heaven
• Mika Song – Hula Warrior
• Chris Sonpiet – Brothers, Something Beautiful
• Chitra Soundar – You’re Snug With Me
• K-Fai Steele – Noodlephant
• Naoko Stoop – Pup and Bear
• Tracy Subisak – Cy Makes A Friend
• Boya Sun – 5 Worlds
• Sarah Suzuki – Yayoi Kusama (2022 Update, discovered Kusama’s history of rampant anti-Blackness which would have been obvious to an author researching her for a biography. Yeah no thanks nevermind. Not recommended.)
• Anoosha Syed – Bilal Cooks Daal

T

• George Takei – They Called Us Enemy
• Jillian Tamaki – They Say Blue
• Mariko Tamaki – This One Summer
• Stanley Todd Terasaki – Ghosts for Breakfast
• Shobha Tharoor Srinivasan – Indi-Alphabet
• Kai Cheng Thom – From The Stars In The Sky
• Maggie Tokuda-Hall – Also An Octopus
• Jean Tseng – The Seven Chinese Brothers
• Mou-Sien Tseng – The Seven Chinese Brothers
• Sarah Tsiang – A Flock Of Shoes
• Pauline Ts’o – Whispers of the Wolf
• Jing Jing Tsong – Pele Finds A Home
• Andrea Tsurumi – Crab Cake
• Basia Tran – My Footprints
• Christian Trimmer – Teddy’s Favorite Toy

U

• Yoshiko Uchida – The Bracelet
• Chieri Uegaki – Hana Hashimoto
• Kana Urbanowicz– Magic Ramen

W

• Hanako Wakiyama – Cat’s not-so-perfect Sandcastle
• Joyce Wan – We Belong Together
• Andrea Wang – Nian Monster
• Jen Wang – Prince and the Dressmaker
• Lin Wang – The Crane Girl
• Lynn Wang – Shining Star
• Rosalind C. Wang – Magical Starfruit Tree
• Mia Wenjen – Sumo Joe
• Brian Won – Hooray For Hat!
• Janet S. Wong – Apple Pie 4th of July
• Liz Wong – Quackers
• Purple Wong – Milo’s Museum
• Katy Wu – Dumpling Dreams
• Mike Wu – Ellie

X

• Jin Xiaojing – I Miss My Grandpa
  
• Yongsheng Xuan – The Dragon Lover

Y

• Kobi Yamada – What Do You Do With An Idea?
• Katie Yamasaki – When The Cousins Came
• Keika Yamaguchi – Teeny Tiny Toady
• Todd Yamashita– Uncle’s Magic Thrownet
• Gene Luen Yang – American Born Chinese
• Kelly Yang – Front Desk
• Tammy Yee – A is for Aloha
• Lawrence Yep – The Khan’s Daughter
• Shirin Yim Bridges – Ruby’s Wish
• Yin – Brothers
• Jonathan Ying – Not Quite Black And White
• Victoria Ying Not Quite Black And White
• Paula Yoo – Shining Star
• Taeeun Yoo – Strictly No Elephants
• Ed Young – I, Doko
• Malala Yousafzai – Malala’s Magic Pencil
• Hyewon Yum – Puddle

Z

• Ange Zhang – Grandfather counts
• Kat Zhang – Amy Wu And The Perfect Bao
• Nancy Zhang – Miss Paul And The President (don’t read that garbage book). I *think* this is a Asian German illustrator who, for whatever reason, white people keep hiring to illustrate their poorly-resarched books. Zhang seems to be exclusively interested in only drawing white people, and also it’s just WEIRD that she was complicit in illustrating a book elevating Alice Paul, known white supremacist who actively DID NOT FIGHT for the rights of Asian women to vote BUT OKAY SURE WHATEVER, you do you, Nancy.)
  • Fam – Every time someone recommends a book about a white suffragist, let’s burn some joss paper for Auntie Mabel.
  • SUBTEXT: Where are all the f-ing books about Asian activists?
• Farhana Zia – Hot, Hot Roti for Dada-Ji

last updated: July 2020

Quick Things You Need To Know:

• The Monkey King (aka Sun Wukong) is a popular trickster character in Chinese culture. My parents read my stories about him and I watched his movies growing up, but they were in Chinese so I never fully got the details. Until recently, it was hard to find books about the Monkey King set in English.
• Modern Monkey King stories mix up elements from Chinese ancestor worship and Buddhism, but the official origin of Sun Wukong is from the 16th century Chinese novel by Wu Cheng’en, Journey To The West. Since then, Monkey has become a common reference character for kids’ cautionary tales promoting Chinese values, particularly the consequences of selfishness (focus on the self rather than the group), hubris, and impetuous action.
• Tricksters & trickster gods are the perfect introduction to the beliefs and values of cultures beyond the ones we grow up in. They make a good entry-point to learn about faiths outside of the dominant group. But there are also some cultural traditions we should learn about and respect before diving in (such as the tradition to not read Coyote stories unless snow is on the ground)
• Tricksters are fundamentally human and flawed in a way more ’serious’ deities are not – and it’s those flaws that make it easier to love them. They aren’t better than us. In fact, compared to them, we are morally superior, smarter, kinder, and doing pretty well. Tricksters serve as a mirror to our flaws in a way that reflects us in a positive light. They make us feel better about ourselves while also allow us to laugh at flaws. (ex: Monkey King by jiang, featuring the first third of Monkey’s life)
• Kids are pulled in by the trickster as a rebel & rule-breaker – gives them the catharsis of seeing a little guy upset the social order and defy authority.  (The monkey king – dickins, middle stage of monkey’s life)
• While learning to operate in a big world while too little to reach the kitchen counter, kids find solace in the escapism of supernatural and super-human feats of strength that modern-day superheroes offer. (The Monkey king by seow *last stage)
• In keeping with the trickster m.o. – you can’t pin down one set of traits in rebels – and there’s a good reason for that. The trickster embodies a sense of need, based on the oppression and values of each culture.  In cultures where the group’s well-being takes precedence over the individual, selfish, gluttonous characters like Sun Wukong appeal to our sense of indulgence. In cultures where humans must work in tune with the whims of the earth and seasons, Coyote is always getting into trouble by trying to fiddling outside his lane. In individualistic societies with broad divides in power, like the one we live in, the rebel fights for socialism and helping the poor – figures like Jesus and Robin Hood. (And yes I just called Jesus a socialist and a trickster.) In this way, tricksters can range from self-interested, short-sighted, and rude, to the clever vigilantes, or even honorable leaders who inspire a revolution. The one thing they have in common is that they disrupt the social order and tap int the undercurrent of fatigue when the norms of a culture become ingrained to daily life.(Ex: Loki/ Fantastic adventures of Krishna)
• The one thing you can count on the trickster to do is throw the party (or universe) into chaos, with the potential to change the landscape of society forever. (Ex: Jesus / Baba Yaga)
• SEE BUDDHA – I’m working on a list of books featuring & discussing the Buddha, and many of these feature references to Buddha. Buddha also plays a large role in many of the books below. The Buddha often takes the role of wise & patient adult to contrast against Monkey King’s selfish impulsiveness. Because we live in the patriarchy now, Buddha is always depicted as masculine instead of nonbinary/ungendered. Which is ridiculous.
• SEE HANUMAN – Despite the things Sun Wukong & Hanuman have in common, I can’t find a common origin to link the two. Both are childlike, but Monkey King presents as more childISH – mischievous and self serving, whereas Hanuman’s stories often contain an childLIKE innocence. Both are from Asia (Monkey King is popular in most of China & parts of South Asia & Pacific Islands, Hanuman is a Hindu deity, which is primarily honored in West/South Asian countries like India. Both are gluttons like sweets, but for different reasons – Hanuman prefers candy (gluttonly for pleasure) Monkey prefers peaches, but only rare peaches that offer special powers (gluttony for power).
• SEE TAOISM – many modern stories about Sun Wukong focus on principles behind Taoism. Common themes include an invisible force behind nature and reality (tao), and the ease of acting in harmony with our roles. Taoism focuses on nature, but Monkey King actively tries to obtain power through unnatural power-ups (like magic peaches), and to climb the social ladder beyond his natural place, which disrupts the social order and environment.
• Something to notice is the way that Monkey King’s distasteful ambitions and action could be seen as a good thing through individualistic Western thought. these stories subtly poke fun at Western hubris, selfishness, and refusal to accept our place in society.
• Also see notes from the great race – one of the things that makes Monkey stories so fun and chaotic is the Chinese nonchalance about intellectual property. ‘inauthenticity’ that harms the original artist is a western problem. typically by Chinese cultural standards, copying someone else’s work and twisting it is not an insult to the original. Although you do risk making a fool of yourself if your spinoff is shitty.

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Quick & Messy Book List:

Suggested order of reading:

• The Monkey King – rosie dickins – ( 2 of 3 adolescence & young adulthood)
  this was our favorite of this phase of Monkey’s Adventures. Intro of him being a crappy king “He was the king of the monkeys, but he was not a good king. He was always stealing food and demanding presents.” ch1 monkey goes to heaven and his ego is affronted to have a lowly job with horses, ch 2 he becomes the steward of the celestial peaches in heaven, and then eats them all (great part about eating just one and that being a gateway peach, so this works well to approach discussions on drug addiction), sneaks into the banquet and runs away and fights the guards. ch 3 buddha’s challenge, when he tries to outrun buddha. i prefer the version of this part in American Born Chinese, as the pillars are clearly fingers so he reveal is less interesting, but i can see why they did it literally for kids (ABC is for teens & young adults). mentions that he piddled on the pillar and wrote “Monkey was here” but doesn’t show him peeing. I wish the Buddha had been depicted as a little less like a frustrated parent, again, I prefer the calm bemusement of ABC since the real buddha would be all powerful and knowing, and you don’t get frustrated when you know you can handle stuff. book ends with him being trapped under a mountain, without uncertainty or ambiguity. illustrations are westernized, but nice and cute, writing is not eloquent or perfect, but clear and understandable. Q loved this more than any other monkey king book. beginner chapter book (3) rebels, drug abuse, entitlement, spoiled, hubris, ego, mischief,  chinese folktales Ages 4.5+ enjoyed, but closer to 5.5+ because of naughty behavior. Worked well to read this to R2 at 4.5 while reading The Magical Monkey King (Jiang) to Q, so they could both discuss Monkey and create Monkey adventures. this is r2’s first monkey king book and he loves it.
• Little Monkey king’s journey – li jian – (birth & origin 1 of 3 in chronological order)
  shows him busting out of rock and being raised by old monkey king, ad how he goes in search of an immortal pill to save him. like always, li jian does the thing where it’s the same redundant lines as he meets each new characters (like in The water dragon) and it gets tedious – but is easy to skip on the fly. the animals he meets give him powers. he starts out brave, but is gifted with the powers of invulnerability, transformation, his magic staff, and his cloud somersault to save his adoptive father. Q enjoyed this book, and drawing connections between how he started out as innocent and progressed to the person he became in ’The Monkey King’ (Dickins). I preciously thought Q enjoyed his powers, but now I’ve learned it’s his naughtyness that Q particularly identifies with.  age range: 4+. Would NOT use this for the adoption collection.
• The monkey king – seow  3 of 3 Monkey’s middle-adulthood and maturity
  in this one, we see how he’s rescued by Tripitaka, the great scripure seeker  in his quest to find buddha’s sciptures to show humanity the way to kindness, peace, and harmony as is his destiny. monkey king then goes on to join T, the keeper of the heavenly garden, the jade emperor’s old cook (both start as attacking monsters and decide to join up when they hear it’s Tripitaka) and together they fight a giant eagle. the super hero trio is rather bickery, which I like. but Q still prefers the mischievous adolescence of Dickins’s phase. this is definitely a kinder, gentler, more thoughtful monkey king in adulthood. lovely illustrations – a modern take on traditional Chinese style. age range: 4+
• the magical monkey king (ji-li jiang) (more advanced version of adolescence / early childhood – mischevous & selfish phase)
  AAPI, first chapter book version of monkey king that Q has been into. perfect for 6.5, but 4.5 is too young to sit through it. he particularly enjoyed it because it was a retelling of a story he’s already familiar with, and he was excited to read it and expand his experience identifying with the monkey king. he utterly loved sitting through this. looks long, but was a quick read, we got through it in about 3 sessions.

PENDING ANALYSIS

• Treasury of chinese folk tales – shelley fu – both Q and I were ejoying this one but we ran out of time. we’re currently waiting for it at the library for another try. expands on monkey king way farther than any other book i’ve read. ages 4.5+ asian chinese folktales, religion (creation stories), ancestor worship, pan gu, nu wo, celestial realm
• Havoc In Heaven – This is the version I grew up with. I can’t get my hands on it as an adult to screen it through an adult lens. There’s a movie available though, with English subtitles. My kids can’t sit still through it and it periodically disappears from our prime subscription, so it’ll be a while until I can comment on this.

CAMEOS & EASTER EGGS

• Angel in Beijing – yang – finds a cat, loses cat, cat makes an old lady happy. it’s fine. takes place in modern beijing but kind of feels old. visuals and text nod to the monkey king, haw fruits on a stick, etc. but not interesting enough to read at 4.5 & 6.5. lost pets. AAPI (taiwan born, immigrated to america at 7)
• My Beijing (Jun) – Lovely book! I go into this in more detail in the elders collection. Transparency: I got a free copy of this from LFBC (they decided it wasn’t right for a book box, but it’s spectacular outside of that context)

For older kids & teens (ages 10+)

• American Born Chinese – Gene Yang – Accidentally Q got ahold of this and hte monkey king illustrations were enticing to him, but also gave him nightmares. odd three-styles of intertwining stories finally made sense in the end, which made me want to read it over again. the stereotype sitcom style made me exhausted, but overall it worked. N said it felt like the book form of frsh off the boat., illustrations: great, engagement: adults only, keywords: racism, chinese culture, folktales,age range: when violence and understanding of parody on stereotypes is okay – 7 or 8+?

NOT RECOMMENDED

• Money king wreaks havoc in heaven  – debby chen covers most of hte stuff other books do, with a different spin and in a little more detail (seems built for older readers) but the illustrations aren’t as much fun and the writing is dry and a little clunky. nah. AAPI
• Monkey King Defeats Red Boy – chen – abrupt beginning feels like it starts three pages too late, which is disorienting. takes place midway along the journey for Tank Monk (Tripitaka). odd pasive violence – a boy left for three days to slowly die while hung from a tree, mentions of throwing the boy off a cliff, yeah i’m gonna call this on – five pages in and hte writing is so terrible I can’t even. don’t get again. asian women makers of color, bilingual (english, chinese characters)
• The gods and goddesses of ancient china – fisher – the slant-eyes REALLY bugs me, they look distorted and monstrous – starts out semi-normal, then gets progressively more distorted. no one looks like that! actual book just picks some random chinese gods and legends and mushes them together (at least acknowledges the variation and broad scope of a non-unified system of rules, ceremonies and disorganized religion.) simple quick profile on each page, but not engaging and gives kids no reason to care about individual gods. boring even for the ones I wan to learn more about, like Guan Yin & Sun Wukong. I’ve seen more expansive stories on most of these gods elsewhere. doesn’t give date of origin, location, or a way to connect any of them. seems like a cash-grab book by white authors pretending to be an educational resource. looks like they consulted a single asian academic and makers are white. problematic – racism, asian religions, folktales, orientalism-slant eyes, whitewashing
• The monkey king – shobha viswanath – NOT the same as the chinese monkey king, but based on a tale from the jataka. not a huge fan because I’m not sure what moral we can take from this story (the monkey king doesn’t want outsiders to find out about mangoes, and when they do, they attack the monkeys unil they realize they are ‘civilized’) which has all kinds of issues of racism and imperialist undertones that I’m not comfortable with. NOPE illustrations: cute but meh keywords: buddhism, religion, folktale.age range: 3.5+, problematic
• Monkey King – ed young looks closest to the 60’s Havoc in Heaven that I grew up with, but not as energetic. ripped paper illustrations are a little confusing (I know he’s super famous but I’ve never been into Young’s style). illustrations are too crude to really figure out what’s going on, and each take is summed up into 2-3 sentences. nah. More of a rudimentary cliffs notes on the adventures of the monkey king.  there’s no background on who all of these characters are, no intro, no explanation on motivations. The author kinda jumps into the story and expects readers to know who the jade emperor and red beard bandit are, etc. so not great for beginners and also not detailed enough for those familiar with the story. read it to Q around age 3 and it was too abstract and surreal for understanding, and now that he’s 5 it’s too simple. not worth getting again.