Grace Lin's Blog, page 137

spring!

It's spring and it's the worst time of year to live in an apartment without a balcony or a deck. However, on such a shiny day, I refuse to be thwarted and have decided to resurrect my homonym garden. The gorgeous garden center lures me to attempt it on a grand scale:


which I cannot resist:

So now I'm off to search for vintage flour canisters! Ah, Spring!

first review of Ling & Ting!

Ling and Ting doesn't come out until July, but it's gotten it's first review! And it's a really nice one from highly esteemed & famous blogger fuse8! phew! so glad she liked it. I'm crossing my fingers tightly that others follow think likewise so the publisher will be willing to make a Ling and Ting series. please cross your fingers, too (though you can wait until July!)

fortune cookie friday

"Habits are cobwebs at first; cables at last."
-Chinese Proverb

my wedding things (on thursdays)

At both my friends' Anna's wedding and Alison's wedding, the decorations were gorgeous. Both of them hung papel picado, strings of paper cut-outs with Mexican designs. I adored the way it looked and paper cutting is also a popular Chinese folk art so I thought I would attempt my own Asian-inspired version of it.

First I designed it, with the double happiness symbol (the traditional Chinese character for a lucky marriage) as the focus. In Chinese culture, magpies are harbingers of happiness and...

school visit fun

At a recent school visit, I was thrilled to see that one of the ways the teacher had the students prepare for my visit was to have them storyboard their favorite parts of my book The Year of the Dog. It was great fun to see what they did:

The Story of Uncle Shin and the Cake was extremely popular:
As was the Story of Mom's Haircut in School:


I was glad to see that my favorite stories were also favorites of the students' as well, like the Story of The Paper Piano:


And the Story of Mom's First Day ...

book talk tuesday

THE CRICKET IN TIMES SQUARE by George Selden

IndieBound Description: Tucker is a streetwise city mouse. He thought he'd seen it all. But he's never met a cricket before, which really isn't surprising, because, along with his friend Harry Cat, Tucker lives in the very heart of New York City—the Times Square subway station. Chester Cricket never intended to leave his Connecticut meadow. He'd be there still if he hadn't followed the entrancing aroma of liverwurst right into someone's picnic baske...

on my desk monday

sketch of a picture I did for Shelftalker's post about "The Elephant in the Room: the need for true racial diversity in children's books and in the publishing field itself in what is still an overwhelmingly white world." The finished illustration & the article should be posted sometime today, HERE.

back on the list!!!

Hey, look! Where the Mountain Meets the Moon is back on the NY Times Bestseller List!

YAY! Squeaked right in! I guess coming back in stock really helps sales...

fortune cookie friday

"There are no mistakes, only lessons."
-Chinese Proverb

my wedding things (on thursdays)

After the cupcake display, my other pet project was what I affectionately called "the sweet table." In a lot of Asian traditions, having sweet food symbolizes sweet wishes-- the New Year tray at Lunar New Year is filled with sweet things, the tea served during the tea ceremony is sweet to symbolize sweet relations, etc. So, a table full of sweets seemed appropriate for a wedding...as well as my sweet tooth! Here is my sketch:

And here is how it turned out:

Isn't it lovely? I cannot take credit ...