Asian American Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander Heritage Month 2023

May is Asian American Pacific Islander Heritage Month! Here’s a list of recent and upcoming books that highlight Asian creators and their stories.

Read Now:

Picture Books:

Ho’onani: Hula Warrior
By Heather Gale
Illustrated by Mika Song
40 Pages | Ages 4-8 | Hardcover
ISBN 9780735264496 | Tundra Books
Ho’onani feels in-between. She doesn’t see herself as wahine (girl) OR kane (boy). She’s happy to be in the middle. But not everyone sees it that way. When Ho’onani finds out that there will be a school performance of a traditional kane hula chant, she wants to be part of it. But can a girl really lead the all-male troupe? Ho’onani has to try. . . . Based on a true story, Ho’onani: Hula Warrior is a celebration of Hawaiian culture and an empowering story of a girl who learns to lead and learns to accept who she really is – and in doing so, gains the respect of all those around her.

It Began With a Page: How Gyo Fujikawa Drew the Way
By Kyo Maclear
Illustrated by Julie Morstad
48 Pages | Ages 5-9 | Hardcover
ISBN 9781101918593 | Tundra Books
Gyo Fujikawa’s iconic children’s books are beloved all over the world. Now it’s time for Gyo’s story to be told – a story of artistic talent that refused to be constrained by rules or expectations. Growing up quiet and lonely at the beginning of the twentieth century, Gyo learned from her relatives the ways in which both women and Japanese people lacked opportunity. Her teachers and family believed in her and sent her to art school and later Japan, where her talent flourished. While Gyo’s career grew and led her to work for Walt Disney Studios, World War II began, and with it, her family’s internment. But Gyo never stopped fighting – for herself, her vision, her family and her readers – and later wrote and illustrated the first children’s book to feature children of different races interacting together.

Kumo: The Bashful Cloud
By Kyo Maclear
Illustrated by Nathalie Dion
64  Pages | Ages 4-8 | Hardcover
ISBN 9780735267282 | Tundra Books
Kumo is a cloud whose only wish is to float unseen. When she’s assigned cloud duty for the day, she feels overwhelmed by self-doubt and her fear of being noticed. But after learning that closing your eyes isn’t a good solution to your troubles, Kumo pulls her fluff together and does her duties – drifting, releasing rain and providing shelter – meeting some new friends along the way and inspiring the imagination (and capturing the heart) of a small daydreamer like her. Kyo Maclear’s sweetly humorous and lyrical parable about shyness, vividly brought to life by Nathalie Dion’s ethereal illustrations, is an affirmation of the pleasures of community and the confidence that can arise from friendship and visibility.

Ten Little Dumplings
By Larissa Fan
Illustrated by Cindy Wume
48 Pages | Ages 4-8 | Hardcover
ISBN 9780735266193 | Tundra Books
In the city of Tainan, there lives a very special family – special because they have ten sons who do everything together. Their parents call them their ten little dumplings, as both sons and dumplings are auspicious. But if you look closely, you’ll see that someone else is there, listening, studying, learning and discovering her own talent – a sister. As this little girl grows up in the shadow of her brothers, her determination and persistence help her to create her own path in the world . . . and becomes the wisdom she passes on to her own daughter, her own little dumpling. Based on a short film made by the author, inspired by her father’s family in Taiwan, Ten Little Dumplings looks at some unhappy truths about the place of girls in our world in an accessible, inspiring and hopeful way.

The Care and Keeping of Grandmas
By Jennifer Mook-Sang
Illustrated by Yong Ling Kang
32 Pages | Ages 3-7 | Hardcover
ISBN 9780735271340 | Tundra Books
It can be discombobulating for all involved when a grandma moves in permanently. Fortunately, our narrator has gone through it and has LOTS of tips on how to make your grandma feel at home. In a story filled with humor, confusion and moments of sweetness, Jennifer Mook-Sang introduces us to a delightful family dynamic and a grandma who doesn’t really need the help settling in but appreciates it anyway. As Grandma goes about her days, her well-meaning granddaughter sees her caring for her plants, and makes sure that Grandma is getting the proper care too.

Middle Grade:

Double O Stephen and the Ghostly Realm
By Angela Ahn
288 Pages | Ages 9-12 | Hardcover
ISBN 9780735268272 | Tundra Books
Stephen loves pirates. What he doesn’t love is his name: Stephen Oh-O’Driscoll. He believes when his Korean mother and Irish father gave him this name, that it was just one cruel setup for being teased. Giving things the proper name is important, which is why Stephen thinks that it’s time to update the definition of “pirate.” They’ve got a bad rep, and maybe they deserve some of it, but Stephen still likes a few pirate traditions, like bandannas and eyepatches – he’s just not that into stealing things from people. He has the perfect new word: piventurate. A sailor who passionately seeks adventure. That’s what he wants to be. When he gets suspended from school for doing proper piventurate-in-training things (using sticks to practice sword fighting), his mother doesn’t let him sit around doing nothing, instead she takes him to a museum. At the museum everything changes. Stephen finds himself in a strange new place, face-to-face with a real pirate. A pirate ghost. Captain Sapperton needs Stephen’s help to cross to the other side, and his former ghost crew are intent on making sure Stephen follows through, whatever it takes. Stephen is about to discover the true meaning of piventurate, and much to his surprise, his adventure will not only take him farther into the ghostly realm, but also closer to home, where long-held family secrets reveal surprising ties to the spirit world.

The Secret Diary of Mona Hasan
By Salma Hussain
296 Pages | Ages 10-14 | Paperback
ISBN 9780735271517 | Tundra Books
Mona Hasan is a young Muslim girl growing up in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, when the first Gulf War breaks out in 1991. The war isn’t what she expects – “We didn’t even get any days off school! Just my luck!” – especially when the ground offensive is over so quickly and her family peels the masking tape off their windows. Her parents, however, fear there is no peace in the region, and it sparks a major change in their lives. Over the course of one year, Mona falls in love, speaks up to protect her younger sister, loses her best friend to the new girl at school, has summer adventures with her cousins in Pakistan, immigrates to Canada, and pursues her ambition to be a feminist and a poet.

Young Adult:

Iron Widow
By Xiran Jay Zhao
416 Pages | Ages 14+ | Paperback
ISBN 9780735269958 | Tundra Books
The boys of Huaxia dream of pairing up with girls to pilot Chrysalises, giant transforming robots that can battle the mecha aliens that lurk beyond the Great Wall. It doesn’t matter that the girls often die from the mental strain. When 18-year-old Zetian offers herself up as a concubine-pilot, it’s to assassinate the ace male pilot responsible for her sister’s death. But she gets her vengeance in a way nobody expected – she kills him through the psychic link between pilots and emerges from the cockpit unscathed. She is labeled an Iron Widow, a much-feared and much-silenced kind of female pilot who can sacrifice boys to power up Chrysalises instead.​ To tame her unnerving yet invaluable mental strength, she is paired up with Li Shimin, the strongest and most controversial male pilot in Huaxia​. But now that Zetian has had a taste of power, she will not cower so easily. She will miss no opportunity to leverage their combined might and infamy to survive attempt after attempt on her life, until she can figure out exactly why the pilot system works in its misogynist way – and stop more girls from being sacrificed.

Wrong Side of the Court
By H. N. Khan
312 Pages | Ages 12+ | Paperback
ISBN 9780735270893 | Tundra Books
Fifteen-year-old Fawad Chaudhry loves two things: basketball and his mother’s potato and ground-beef stuffed parathas. Both are round and both help him forget about things like his father, who died two years ago, his mother’s desire to arrange a marriage to his first cousin, Nusrat, back home in Pakistan, and the tiny apartment in Regent Park he shares with his mom and sister. Not to mention his estranged best friend Yousuf, who’s coping with the shooting death of his older brother. But Fawad has plans: like, asking out Ashley, even though she lives on the other, wealthier side of the tracks, and saving his friend Arif from being beaten into a pulp for being the school flirt, and making the school basketball team and dreaming of being the world’s first Pakistani to be drafted into the NBA. All he has to do now is convince his mother to let him try out for the basketball team. And let him date girls from his school. Not to mention somehow get Omar, the neighborhood bully, to leave him alone.

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Picture Book:

Dim Sum Palace
By X. Fang
48 Pages | Ages 3-7 | Hardcover
ISBN 9781774881989 | Tundra Books
Liddy is so excited about going to the Dim Sum Palace tomorrow with her family that she can’t sleep. So when a delicious smell wafts into her room, she hops out of bed, opens her door and steps into . . . an actual palace of dim sum! There are dumplings, baos, buns and more delicious treats than one girl can possibly eat. Liddy just has to take a bite, but she slips and falls . . . into a bowl of dumpling filling. The chefs are so busy rolling, folding and pinching dough that they don’t notice they’ve prepared a most unusual dumpling for the Empress – a Liddy dumpling! Worst of all, she looks good enough to eat . . .

Young Adult:

Of Light and Shadow
By Tanaz Bhathena
448 Pages | Age 12+ | Hardcover
ISBN 9780735271432 | Penguin Teen Canada
When they don’t give us our birthright, we steal it. Roshan Chaya is out for justice. Abandoned by her parents at birth and adopted by the kingdom of Jwala’s most notorious bandit before his brutal murder, she is now leader of the Shadow Clan, a gang of farmers-turned-bandits impoverished by the provincial governor’s atrocities and corruption. Roshan’s goal: to avenge her adoptive father and earn back rights and dignity for her people. Prince Navin has always felt like an outcast. Second in line for the throne, he has never been close to his grandmother, Queen Bhairavi of Jwala. When a night out drinking with friends leads to his capture by the infamous Shadow Clan, Navin schemes to befriend Roshan and use her as a means to escape. His ploy, however, brings Navin closer to the corruption and poverty at the heart of Roshan’s province, raising questions about its governor and Navin’s own family. To further complicate things, the closer Roshan and Navin get, the harder it becomes to fight their growing attraction. But how can they trust each other when the world as they know it starts to fall apart? Set in a magical world inspired by the badlands of 17th century India, this standalone epic fantasy novel by Tanaz Bhathena is packed with political tensions, dangerous schemes, and swoon-worthy romance that asks the age old question: can love conquer all?

Something More
By Jackie Khalilieh
336 Pages | Age 12+ | Hardcover
ISBN 9781774882139 | Tundra Books
Fifteen-year-old Jessie, a quirky loner obsessed with the nineties, is diagnosed as autistic just weeks before starting high school. Determined to make a fresh start and keep her diagnosis a secret, Jessie creates a list of goals that range from acquiring two distinct eyebrows to getting a magical first kiss and landing a spot in the school play. Within the halls of Holy Trinity High, she finds a world where things are no longer black and white and quickly learns that living in color is much more fun. But Jessie gets more than she bargained for when two very different boys steal her heart, forcing her to go off-script.

Tuesdays with Tundra

Tuesdays with Tundra is an ongoing series featuring our new releases. These titles are now available in stores and online!

Funeral Songs for Dying Girls
By Cherie Dimaline
280 Pages | Ages 14+ | Hardcover
ISBN 9780735265639 | Tundra Books
Winifred has lived in the apartment above the cemetery office with her father, who works in the crematorium all her life, close to her mother’s grave. With her sixteenth birthday only days away, Winifred has settled into a lazy summer schedule, lugging her obese Chihuahua around the grounds in a squeaky red wagon to visit the neglected gravesides and nursing a serious crush on her best friend, Jack. Her habit of wandering the graveyard at all hours has started a rumor that Winterson Cemetery might be haunted. It’s welcome news since the crematorium is on the verge of closure and her father’s job being outsourced. Now that the ghost tours have started, Winifred just might be able to save her father’s job and the only home she’s ever known, not to mention being able to stay close to where her mother is buried. All she has to do is get help from her con-artist cousin to keep up the rouse and somehow manage to stop her father from believing his wife has returned from the grave. But when Phil, an actual ghost of a teen girl who lived and died in the ravine next to the cemetery, starts showing up, Winifred begins to question everything she believes about life, love and death. Especially love.

The Care and Keeping of Grandmas
By Jennifer Mook-Sang
Illustrated by Yong Ling Kang
32 Pages | Ages 3-7 | Hardcover
ISBN 9780735271340 | Tundra Books
It can be discombobulating for all involved when a grandma moves in permanently. Fortunately, our narrator has gone through it and has LOTS of tips on how to make your grandma feel at home. In a story filled with humor, confusion and moments of sweetness, Jennifer Mook-Sang introduces us to a delightful family dynamic and a grandma who doesn’t really need the help settling in but appreciates it anyway. As Grandma goes about her days, her well-meaning granddaughter sees her caring for her plants, and makes sure that Grandma is getting the proper care too.

The Song That Called Them Home
By David A. Robertson
Illustrated by Maya McKibbin
52 Pages | Ages 4-8 | Hardcover
ISBN 9780735266704 | Tundra Books
One summer day, Lauren and her little brother, James, go on a trip to the land with their Moshom (grandfather). After they’ve arrived, the children decide to fish for dinner while Moshom naps. They are in their canoe in the middle of the lake when the water around them begins to swirl and crash. They are thrown overboard and when Lauren surfaces she sees her brother being pulled away by the Memekwesewak – creatures who live in and around water and like to interfere with humans. Lauren must follow the Memekwesewak through a portal and along a watery path to find and bring back James. But when she finally comes upon her brother, she too feels the lure of the Memekwesewak’s song. Something even stronger must pull them back home.  

New in Paperback:

Me Three
By Susan Juby
232 Pages | Ages 10+ | Paperback
ISBN 9780735268746 | Puffin Canada 
Eleven-year-old Rodney is starting sixth grade in a new school, in a new home in a new state. The new school is really old and smells like someone ate a couple of pounds of glue and then barfed it back up, and he’s in a class with a bunch of kids who seem to sort of hate him. Even his best friend won’t write him back. It’s strange, because just a couple of months ago, Rodney was one of the most popular guys in his fifth-grade class. He lived in Las Vegas, with his mom, older sister and his dad, who was a successful professional poker player. Now his old life is over – his mom even says they shouldn’t tell anyone their real last name. Because of something his dad did. Or something people said that he did. His dad says it’s all a big misunderstanding, but he’s now staying in a center “for people who are having problems, like being addicted to drugs or gambling, or because other people don’t understand that you are just funny and friendly and sometimes you give people hugs or put your arm around them and they accuse you of taking liberties and ruin everything.” Rodney is confident that it won’t be long until the misunderstanding is all cleared up and they can all go back to their old life. But he can only keep the truth at bay for so long . . . .

Mine for Keeps
By Jean Little
232 Pages | Ages 8-12 | Paperback
ISBN 9781774882948 | Puffin Canada 
Away at school, Sally Copeland has always dreamed of going home, but now that she’s there, she feels frightened and unsure of herself.Will her brother and sister accept her? Will she be able to do things for herself? And what will it be like to go to a regular school and be the only one with cerebral palsy?

We can’t wait to see you reading these title! If you share these books online, remember to use #ReadTundra in your hashtags so that we can re-post.

Tundra Telegram: Books That Are Everything

Hello, and thanks for joining us at Tundra Telegram, the column where we scan the topics shifting around in readers’ heads so we can feel what you feel and recommend some suitable reading.

The film everyone is talking about this week is the multiple-award winning indie hit, Everything Everywhere All At Once. The movie (EEAAO, to friends) has been crowned with awards for acting, directing, and editing from some of the most prestigious accolades the film industry has to offer.

We at Tundra already put together a reading list (back in April 2022!) connected to EEAO, but this week, we wanted to present a few books for young readers that speak to one particular theme in the movie: that of the second generation East Asian-American experience, and the conflict and hardships between that generation and their immigrant parents.

PICTURE BOOKS

The relationship between a girl and the grandmother in Jennifer Mook-Sang and Yong Ling Kang‘s The Care and Keeping of Grandmas is a lot less fraught (and way more playful) than that between Becky and Gong Gong, but the picture book looks at the sometimes disorienting process of a grandparent coming to live with the family. Luckily, our young narrator has a lot of handy tips for making sure Grandma gets proper care in her new home.

Famed and influential children’s illustrator Gyo Fujikawa was born in Berkeley, California to Japanese-born parents, and the picture book It Began with a Page by Kyo Maclear and Julie Morstad chronicles how she had to make her own opportunities in a country where there were few for Asian Americans. Gyo worked for Disney, but soon her whole family was imprisoned during World War II. Then she later became a noted artist for young people, pushing against the publishing industry to illustrate children’s books that featured children of different races interacting with each other.

A girl’s embarrassment with her Chinese-born parents kicks off the acclaimed Watercress by Andrea Wang and Jason Chin. Like EEAO, the book represents a reconciliation of different generations, as the American-born daughter – first mortified when her parents stop their car to gather some watercress they spot on the side of the highway – learns to appreciate the fresh food they forage and their memories in their old country that inspired them to continue the practice in their new one.

Aside from love in a laundromat, what could be more romantic than love in the library? The true story of the author’s grandparents inspired Love in the Library by Maggie Tokuda-Hall and Yas Imamura, about two Japanese Americans imprisoned in an internment camp during World War II who strike up a friendship that becomes something more in the camp’s small library.

CHAPTER BOOKS & MIDDLE GRADE

A fearful second grader is the star of the hilarious Alvin Ho books by Lenore Look and LeUyen Pham. Alvin Ho is afraid of nearly everything. And that fear connects with intergenerational tension when his GungGung’s best friend dies, and Alvin volunteers to join his grandfather at the funeral. Alvin Ho: Allergic to Dead Bodies, Funerals, and Other Fatal Circumstances sees Alvin face his fears to grow closer to his grandpa.

The past generation’s choices come to haunt the present in Tae Keller‘s Newbery winner When You Trap a Tiger. Lily and her family move in with her sick grandmother, but what they don’t know is grandma stole something from mythical, magical tigers in her youth. Now one of the tigers is back and offers Lily a trade for her grandmother’s health – but can you trust a magical tiger?

Speaking of sick grandmas, Peter Lee’s Hammy is quite ill in Angela Ahn‘s Peter Lee’s Notes from the Field, and the eleven-year-old finds himself conflicted about the silence in his family. But Peter, who has honed his observation and experimental skills in his efforts to become a paleontologist, tries to use his science skills to make a plan to help out Hammy.

Conflict over career choice underlies Stand Up, Yumi Chung! by Jessica Kim, as the titular Yumi Chung tries to convince her parents that she has a future career as a comedian. Her Korean parents want her to pass a scholarship exam so she can attend an exclusive private school. But when she stumbles into a comedy camp led by her idol Jasmine Jasper and is mistaken for another camper, her madcap double life begins!

Tiến, not unlike Becky in EEAO, is a second generation immigrant who struggles with how to tell his Vietnamese parents he is gay in the beautiful graphic novel The Magic Fish by Trung Le Nguyen. But he loves his family and friends and wants to share his secret with them, so he uses his beloved fairy tales to navigate through the difficult conversations and choices in his life.

Sisters Stella and Luna (who are not bats) learn about their mama’s youth in the Philippines in Cookie Hiponia‘s We Belong, a novel in verse that combines the immigrant experience with Filipino myth and legend. The girls ask their mama about the Philippines, and she combines her childhood as a strong-willed middle child and immigrant with that of the story of Mayari, the mythical daughter of a god.

YOUNG ADULT

The feeling of not belonging shoots through both our movie and Imposter Syndrome and Other Confessions of Alejandra Kim by Patricia Park. Alejandra Kim, daughter of second-generation Korean Argentines, has trouble fitting in at her elite and progressive prep school where she’s surrounded by wealthy white classmates who don’t know she’s a scholarship student. Add to that, her father recently died, and Alejandra has a difficult relationship with her mother at best (if that sounds familiar at all).

Reconnecting with the roots of family she’s never known is central to Throwaway Daughter by Ting-Xing Ye (with William Bell). Grace Dong-mei Parker is a Canadian teenager who was adopted from China, who has little interest in her birth mother’s country until she witnesses news footage of the 1989 Tiananmen Square Massacre. Grace studies Chinese and travels back to China in search of her birth mother to uncover the story of what happened almost twenty years before.

Intergenerational differences – particularly attitudes around dating – are at play in Jennifer Yen‘s fun rom-com A Taste for Love. Liza Yang and her mother may not agree on dating, but they agree on a love of baking. So when Liza decides to help out at her mother’s bakery’s annual bake-off, she gets a shock when she discovers all of the baking contestants are young Asian American men her mother has handpicked for Liza to date (!).

Romance and mother-daughter relationships also form the heart of From Little Tokyo, with Love by Sarah Kuhn, a love story with a fairy tale twist. Orphan Rika lives with her bossy cousins and works in her aunts’ business in Los Angeles, but things change during the Nikkei Week Festival, when she begins to believe festival guest and rom-com sweetheart Grace Kimura may be her long-lost mother! Luckily, she also gets to work with cute actor Hank Chen, as she quests through Little Tokyo to discover the truth.

A Scatter of Light is Malinda Lo‘s follow-up to her acclaimed (and frequently banned) Last Night at the Telegraph Club, and one in a most contemporary setting: a queer coming-of-age story against the first major Supreme Court decisions to legalize gay marriage in the States. Aria Tang West is sent to spend summer with her artist grandmother after a graduation party mishap. And it’s there that she finds community – and perhaps even romance – with Steph Nichols, her grandmother’s intriguing gardener.

Frank Li, the protagonist of Frankly in Love by David Yoon, has a troubled relationship with his culture. Though he doesn’t speak Korean and has lived in Southern California his whole life, his parents still expect him to end up with a “nice Korean girl.” Accordingly, Frank keeps his relationship with the (white) girl of his dreams, Brit, a secret by fake-dating a family friend with similar parental problems: Joy Song. And you’ve read enough rom-coms to know what happens next. Can Frank maintain two relationships? Can he truly be everything, everywhere, all at once?

Tundra Book Group