Dumpling Soup

Winner of the first New Voices, New World Multicultural Fiction Contest in 1990, this story of a Hawaiian girl's New Year's Eve is as warm and comforting as homemade soup. Marisa narrates this slice of Korean-Chinese-Japanese-Hawaiian-Anglo life, describing her close-knit family's New Year's Eve traditions. She describes the food, the games, the fireworks and the evening's climax, a midnight feast of dumpling soup in which float Marisa's lumpy but lovingly praised first attempts at making dumplings. With her savory prose, Rattigan cooks up a world replete with love and respect for one's family and heritage. Nuggets of pithy dialogue convey the essence of family members: "'Too much gossip!' says Grandma in Korean. `Mince that cabbage! More bean sprouts!' '' Hsu-Flanders's watercolors are stuffed with delicate details and are as appetizing as Marisa's ingenuous tone—and her dumplings. Ages 4-8. (Oct.)

Copyright 1993 Publishers Weekly, LLC Used with permission

Each year, the women in Marisa's family, living in the Hawaiian islands, gather to prepare dumplings ("mandoo'') for the New Year's celebration—and this year Marisa is old enough to help. After she's wrapped her dumplings, she worries throughout the New Year's Eve festivities with her large clan (mostly Korean) that they aren't good enough; but then Grandma makes Marisa's dumplings a featured part of the first meal of the new year. It seems grudging to apply words like "didactic'' to such an openhearted exercise in multiculturalism, but the book's packaging—including a publisher's note explaining the importance of diversity—is so insistent that it nearly sinks the capable storytelling and illustration. Still, Rattigan's scenes of bustling domesticity have a cozy immediacy; Hsu-Flanders's watercolors joyfully crowd the small rooms of their Hawaiian home with happy relatives of all sizes, dressed in bright, patterned clothing (though only the narrator's hair style differentiates her from her cousins). Foreign words and phrases are readily decoded from context (except for a few food names); many also appear in a glossary of Hawaiian, Japanese, English, and Korean terms. (Picture book. 4-8)

Copyright 1993 Kirkus Reviews, LLC Used with permission