Katie loves to show her grandma how to dress a Barbie...and GninGnin
loves to show Katie how to make rice dumplings. More than anything,
Katie longs to go with GninGnin to work, to crack a mountain of crabs
alongside her at the crab cannery.
One day Katie gets her wish, but nothing is the way she'd imagined it.
GninGnin swings a heavy mallet from sunup to sundown in a noisy, smelly
room, earning barely enough for bus fare and a fish for dinner. That
evening, when Katie eats the delicious meal that GninGnin has cooked --
"made with love as strong as ginger and dreams as thick as black-bean
paste" -- she has a new understanding of her beloved grandma's hard
life, and the sacrifices she's made to give her granddaughter a brighter
future.
All the poignancy of Lenore Look's beautifully realized story -- based
on her own childhood memories of her Chinese immigrant grandmother -- is
captured in Caldecott Honor Medalist Stephen T. Johnson's sensitive,
expressive pastels.