Skip to main content

Dumplings For Lili

By


Dumplings For Lili
Written by Melissa Iwai
Norton Young Readers, 2021. Picture Book.

Lili loves to make dumplings with her Nai Nai. Her grandmother has taught her all the secrets for making delicious baos, from kneading the dough to making the filling that goes inside. One day Nai Nai and Lili are busy making dumplings when Nai Nai discovers that they are out of cabbage. She asks Lili to run up to the sixth floor of their apartment building and borrow some cabbage from a friend. Babica is happy to share some of her cabbage but she needs some potatoes so she asks Lili to go ask Granma on the second floor for some potatoes. Lili goes up and down the stairs taking ingredients to six different grandmothers until finally a very tired Lili returns to her apartment to help finish their dumplings  When all the food is ready six grandmothers bring the delicious food outside to celebrate the arrival of Lili's new baby brother. 

This charming story introduces the reader to different cultures as Lili goes from apartment to apartment. Bright engaging art shows how different each grandmother's apartment is with its own unique style representative of their culture and country. There is a warmth and charm about this sunny picture book that describes how a multicultural community comes together to celebrate food, friendship and love. A sweet story about neighbors gathering together to welcome a new baby and a perfect book to introduce children to a variety of cuisines and cultures.
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

If You Like...KPop Demon Hunters

By
KPop Demon Hunters has been one of the most talked-about movies of the summer. If you loved this movie as much as I did, you don't want the magic (or the music) to stop. Try reading these books that touch on some of the same topics and themes as the animated hit! Brick Dust and Bones By M. R. Fournet New York: Feiwel and Friends, 2023. Fiction. 247 pages. Orphaned Marius works in the family business--as their cemetery's ghost caretaker. However, Marius also moonlights as a monster hunter in order to earn the costly Mystic currency he needs to bring his mother back from the dead. As the window to bring his mother back begins to close, Marius's exploits get more and more dangerous, and he may have set his sights on a monster too big to handle on his own. Like Mira, Marius longs for familial connection, and his work as a monster hunter will satisfy the thrill of demon hunting for fans the movie. Where's Halmoni? By Julie J. Kim Seattle, WA: Little Bigfoot, 2017. Comics. W...
Post a Comment
Read more

Review: The Teacher of Nomad Land

By
The Teacher of Nomad Land: A World War II Story By Daniel Nayeri Montclair, NJ: Levine Querido, 2025. Historical fiction. 181 pgs. In 1941 Iran, 13-year-old Babak will do anything to stay with his younger sister Sana, who is 8. After their father is killed during the Anglo-Soviet invasion of Iran, the siblings are left orphaned and Babak takes over guardianship to prevent the two from being separated. Carrying his father's blackboard on his back, Babak and Sana set off from Isfahan to find the nomadic tribes as they make their yearly trek across the mountains. Along the way, they encounter a suspicious man named Vulf, a friendly Englishman with a name that means cabbage, and a Jewish boy named Ben who has Vulf hot on his heels. As he is known for doing, Daniel Nayeri weaves a highly readable adventure with threads of philosophy about God, the ties of family, and musings about how cultures can reconcile across differences. The setting of this novel is ingeniously unique, and a lengt...
Post a Comment
Read more

Review: The Factory

By
The Factory By Catherine Egan New York, NY : Scholastic Inc., 2025. Fiction. 306 pages.  Thirteen-year-old Asher Doyle has been invited to join the Factory, a secretive research facility in the desert which ostensibly extracts renewable energy from the electromagnetic fields of its young recruits. But Asher soon realizes something sinister is going on. Kids are getting sick. The adults who run the Factory seem to be keeping secrets. And the extraction process is not only painful and exhausting, but existentially troubling. Asher makes a handful of new friends who help him with an investigation that turns into a resistance, which turns into...a cliffhanger! The Factory is a page-turning sci-fi with multidimensional characters, an intriguing plot, and refreshingly straight-forward writing. Egan weaves in detail about climate crises and social unrest, making the story's dystopian setting feel rich and plausible. With its sophisticated themes and accessible storytelling, I would recomm...
Post a Comment
Read more