Long-Long's New Year

Review also includes:

Chopsticks, ***, Jon Berkeley, Oxford, 32pp, 978-0192724564

These two picture books present stories focusing on the Chinese New Year. Both of them are set in contemporary China, the first in a rural village market place, the second amongst the sky-scrapers and sampans of Hong Kong.

In Gower’s story, Long-Long accompanies his grandpa on an arduous tricycle-truck expedition to the market to sell cabbages. This is supposed to finance the spring celebrations, but a puncture en route seriously deflates their prospects. After some setbacks, Long-Long’s hard work and selflessness ensure a happy outcome. The message is somewhat predictable, but the story features realistic allusions to the toil, insecurity and rivalry of peasant life. The glossary and the appendix on the origins of the festival are useful bonuses. He Zhihong’s page filling illustrations, reminiscent of traditional silk-paintings, are wonderfully evocative of the intriguing turmoil of the market place.

Berkeley’s fairy tale features a mouse who befriends a wooden dragon. Both of them ache to see a wider world, and eventually their wishes are spectacularly granted through the intervention of the blind sculptor who carved the dragon. This is an uncomplicated little fantasy vividly brought to life by Berkeley’s richly embellished paintings.