Love as Strong as Ginger - Hardcover

Look, Lenore

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0689812485 ISBN 13: 9780689812484

Publisher: Atheneum Books for Young Readers, 1999

Synopsis

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.

About this title

From the Author:

My immigrant grandmother inspired this book
Dear Readers,

This story was inspired by my grandmother who worked in a Seattle cannery in the 1960s and 70s. She was among the older immigrant women, mostly from Southeast Asia, who, because they lacked English and job skills, did the only work they could find: shaking crab. The bone-rattling work required an athlete's stamina and the strength of a circus performer. The work paid very litle: three pennies for every pound of crabmeat. On a good day, working rapid-fire, my grandmother might have earned six dollars, tops. For many years, I thought my grandmother's work was a matter of survival. But it wasn't. She was doing something beyond survival, something I wouldn't understand until I was all grown up.... Though Seattle canneries are gone now, and my grandmother has passed away, it isn't hard for me to remember that time in our lives when I lived without yesterday or tomorrow and Grandma served heaven on a spoon.

About the Author:

Stephen T. Johnson is the creator of such well-known children's books as My Little Red Toolbox, a Publishers Weekly bestseller; My Little Blue Robot, a Newsweek Holiday pick; A is for Art: An Abstract Alphabet, an ALA Notable and a New York Times Best Illustrated Book of the Year; and Alphabet City, recipient of a Caldecott Honor, a New York Times Best Illustrated Book of the Year, and a Society of Illustrators Gold Medal. His artwork can be found in permanent and public collections including the National Portrait Gallery at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, DC, the DeKalb Avenue Subway Station in Brooklyn, New York, the Universal Metro Station in Los Angeles, California, and Love Field Airport in Dallas, Texas. Stephen is a professor at the University of Kansas and he lives in Lawrence, Kansas. Please visit him at StephenTJohnson.com.

Lenore Look is the author of Ruby Lu, Brave and True, an ALA Notable Book; Love As Strong As Ginger, illustrated by Caldecott Honor artist Stephen T. Johnson; and Henry's First-Moon Birthday, illustrated by Yumi Heo. She lives in Randolph, New Jersey.

About this edition

• Publisher: Atheneum Books for Young Readers
• Publication date: 1999
• ISBN 10: 0689812485
• ISBN 13: 9780689812484
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 32
• Illustrator: Johnson Stephen T