Yanting Gueh's Blog, page 3

Hey Lovely, Are You Taking Care of Yourself?

This week's post is partly inspired by my dear friend, Barbara from March of Time Books . I knew she was diagnosed with osteoporosis (brittle bones) but never knew how severe her condition is. These days, Barbara strengthens herself through long, leisurely walks in the British countryside and pilates. She even tried Tai Chi for a while. I find her way of coping with a health issue very admirable. And I like how she's taking care of herself. Something many of us want to do, but aren't doing. Es...

Wishes of a Girl Who Loses Her Home, Her Voice & Her Dog (Middle Grade Feature: Paper Wishes)

It's 1942, right after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbour.

We all know what happened to Americans during WWII.

We all know what happened to the Japanese, too.

But what about the Japanese Americans? What happened to them?

Ten-year-old Manami, her family, and her beloved dog live on Bainbridge Island, Washington. Their home is by the sea, and they live peacefully until one day they are forced to move.

Where to?

To a prison camp in the California desert.

Why?

Nobody would tell her why.

All Manami knows...

Picture Book Feature: We Have An Elephantom Problem

We have an elephantom.

He turned up one Tuesday after dinner.

To be honest, he's starting to bug me.

We have a what?

An elephant phantom. Elephantom.

This ghost is becoming quite the nuisance. He keeps the girl awake at night with his antics, eats all the peanut butter, and invites his rowdy friends over on Friday nights. The poor girl is frazzled out. (Plus, her room really stinks from all the elephantom-dung!)

So she turns to her family for help.

No, not her parents. They don't seem to notice anyt...

Good News: A Pigeon Storyteller Flew Out to the Moon & Came Back

I have the world's shortest trilogy to share this week. My trilogy. (I promise I won't drag on!) This will be at the most a 10-min read.

Do you remember the times you wanted something badly (e.g. that 'A' in English Literature, or making the basketball team, or getting that dream job, or aiming for the moon) but knew you weren't quite good enough to achieve those goals yet? More importantly, do you remember going for them and staying in the game nevertheless?

I want to share a small but s...

The Slowest Book Ever

This post might take you 1, 561 hours to read. Seriously, take your time. Check out every curve or stroke of each letter. Examine each pixel of illustrations. Tilt your face slowly towards the sky and ponder ... and ponder ... and then slowly come back to finish reading the paragraph.

No, not seriously. Hehehe.

The Slowest Book Ever, by April Pulley Sayre and Kelly Murphy, is a delightful collection of facts about many s-l-o-w sides in nature, animals, plants, body, geology, food, arts and even...

Middle Grade Feature: The Diary of Ma Yan (The Struggles and Hopes of a Chinese Schoolgirl)

This is part of an entry where Ma Yan talks about having lost a pen:

I'm distraught.

You're probably going to start laughing. "A pen. What a little thing to get so distressed about!


If only you knew the trouble I had to take to get that pen. I saved up my pocket money for two weeks. Some of my comrades have two or three pens, but I had none and I couldn't resist buying one.

...For days, I had only eaten yellow rice. I preferred going hungry and saving so that I could buy the pen. How I suffered f...

A Little Red Guard's Childhood (Picture Book Feature: Mao and Me)

Hello there!

This post is longer than my usual book features, but please stay. Take your time reading it. I'm fairly certain you'll learn something new from the book below (as I have). Something about a time not too long ago, yet felt so distant. Something about a country we all know but don't know so well. Something about similarities and differences in childhood.
The author-illustrator, Chen Jiang Hong, grew up in the north of China in the mid 60s. This book is about his childhood.

His childho...

Not Cutting It Anymore. Here's What We Also Need ...

Here's the one that was sold! Moody and a bit frightening. Click on it to check out my other covers.I beg to ... uhm add in.

The only way to do great work is to love what you do, and to make it happen.

Most of you who visit my humble blog are fellow authors, artists, bloggers (and one very special vintage bookseller ~ *wave wave).Perhaps you are striving hard every day to bring your stories to life. Perhaps you're able to enjoy a comfortable-enough life through your work. Perhaps you are strugg...

Giving Authors A Second Chance (& Finding David Almond's Intriguing Short Stories)

This week, I discover that giving an author a second chance can make me a happy reader.

You know how you pick up a book by an author you haven't read before, read it, and don't really like it that much? And from then on, whenever you see that author's other books, you'd shrug and pass with a polite smile?

I read my first David Almond book few years ago. I hadn't heard of him then (oh, but he is well-known, very well-known and an award-winner) so I certainly didn't pick up that book because of h...

Are You Here for the Tea Party?

I'd love to tell you about this quiet, classy picture book this week.

Except, I can't.

Because it isn't available at my library yet. So I searched for the next best alternative and found this:The Tea Party in the Woods, Chinese edition ~ Hurrah! The original is in Japanese. Author-Illustrator Akiko Miyakoshi's artwork and storytelling senses are brilliant.

Here's what the story is about:

The snow has stopped. Kikko's father sets off to Grandma's house to shovel snow. But wait, he has forgotten to...