My three-year-old daughter and I happened across Under the Cherry Blossom Tree by Allen Say at our local library. It was different from any other kids' book we had read--strange, funny, and maybe a little disturbing. (Face it. We're talking about an old man with a tree growing out of his head.) But because of the humor, the beautiful illustration, and the poetically just ending, it soon became our favorite.

One problem was that the library wanted it back. The other problem was that it was out of print.

You won't know just how happy I was to find that Under the Cherry Blossom Tree had been re-printed until you read this book for yourself.

A wonderful story about how a young girl finds her true source of inspiration to draw and paint. Allen Say does a fabulous job with his watercolor illustrations.

It goes without saying that all of Allen Say's books are wonderful; if you've not read "Tea with Milk" or "Grandfather's Journey" or "Allison" (the best book about adoption I've ever read), you are missing a great master in the world of children's picture books. Say both writes and illustrates his books, and the continuity created by this one-person effort (not that he's the only writer who illustrates his own books) is always noticeable, providing a consistency in tone and approach sometimes absent in children's books when the writing and art jobs are divvied up.

Allen Say illustrates his books with rich, yet spare, watercolors that work lovingly and effortlessly with his clean prose style. His paintings are highly representational, even photographic at times, and their perspective and precision are more sometimes more suggestive of oils than watercolors. In this book, Say departs from this realistic tendency at times when he captures beautifully the developing artistic sensibility of a young girl. I don't want to say how he does it, or tell you more about the story than this, because its unfolding is part of the joy here.

For any artistic child, this is a gift of validation for his or her creative interest. And this takes children who appreciate art into the inner world of those who create it. I can't say enough about this fabulous book.

I don't know how you can give this book 4 stars! If anything this is a 5 star book. I've met Allen Say and he said that 'The question that all authors hate most is, Were do you get your ideas? So I wrote this book and if somone asks me were I get my ideas for books I say read Emma's Rug.

How My Parents Learned to Eat is a tremedous book for young readers. It has the spoof, romance, and differences in cultures that many will enjoy, young and old. Involving a young Japanese schoolgirl and an American soldier in Japan, How My Parents Learned to Eat, is a story that involves the idea of resolving differences, and how much a single try can count.

"How My Parents Learned To Eat" presents Japanese and American cultures in a story. The readers read about the cultural values through a little girl's first person narrative. From her telling, the readers will understand Japanese customs in its cultural context, such as bowing for greeting and drinking soup from the bowl. These concepts may be foreign or even funny to Americans who are unfamiliar Japanese culture. The author, however, successfully weave elements from both Ameriacn and Japanese cultures into the story. The respect for both Japanese and American cultures is also evident in the book. Not only did the mother (Japanese) want to learn the Western way of eating, but the father (American) is also willingly to learn the Japanese way of eating. So, in the end of the story, the little girl says again, "That's why at our house some days we eat with chopsticks and some days we eat with knives and forks" (p. 32).

A bi-racial child tells the story of how her Japanese mother and American father met, fell in love, struggled to understand each other's ways, and finally married. It's a wonderful portrait of diversity, showing children that superficial differences in cultures don't really mean much and shouldn't get in the way of people appreciating each other. But just as important to me is the fact that this is one of the few children's books I know of that shows adults falling in love in a realistic way - no fairy tale, love at first sight kind of thing, but a picture of love growing as two people learn more about each other. Those two qualities - its appreciation of cultural diversity and its honest portrait of love - make it a little gem.

This book is about Japanese children in a camp in Calofornia in 1941-1945 (World War 2). Allen Say uses a lot of descriptive writing in this book. It is very mysterious because we do not know who all the children are. I think this is a spectacular book for all agoes. I also recommend this book for anyone who likes descriptive writing.

Beautiful, poignant book. Even though it is a children's book, it is abstract, and perhaps hard for even some adults to understand. Despite the symbolic nature of most of the objects in the book, the message is clear, though blurry at the edges.

Children's books are often the best reading -- and I might not find some titles were it not for Amazon's List Makers. "Home of the Brave" by Allen Say is such a discovery, a beautiful book.

Lucky is the author who can extend his message through his own poignant illustrations. This story of a man whose kayak is swept over a falls into an underground river is told as if in a dream. Is he climbing out of a kiva? Encountering two children, he walks with them in the desert toward lights which are those of an internment camp.

This surreal story tells about a people deserted by the country to whom they had given their allegiance. We remember the injustices during World War II and wonder what scars from today's prejudices and judgments are foretold.

How I would like to hear a group of young readers discuss what this story means to them. I hope parents and teachers do not try to escape facing these issues with children. To me there is a plea for understanding and Peace, and there is Hope. I will read it again and again.

A cute look at Elmo doing everything possible to keep a monster left in his care from waking up. Very typically Elmo--my kids love it.

Nora won't let me read the Elmo book though. She literally won't put it down. She is holding it in one hand right now while she plays with her F. P. farm with the other. Great choice!

The beginning of this book is a nice, calm, peaceful story about a boy interested in cartooning. But then the story changes and is suddenly about a boy growing up, and going through adolescence. I thought some chapters were very gross, and other chapters were just really scary and frightful. I am reading this book when I am eleven, and I think that it is too old for me to read. It is about 13-15 year olds, and the problems and things people of that age group face scare me, or don't interest me. I don't really no whether to suggest or not to suggest this book, but I can say you should be older than 13 to read it, and you should be ready for a big change in plot in the middle of the book.-Katharine Manning, American School In Japan, 6th grade.

At first when I saw that someone had given this book two stars, I was amazed ... then I read the whole review and saw the person gave very appropriate reasons. This book is excellent reading for a wide variety of people; the author had a highly unusual childhood, essentially becoming unofficially "emancipated" from his parents and living on his own from early adolescence. We learn a great deal about the thoughts and experiences of a talented author and writer who saw into a number of unfamiliar and intriguing worlds.

At the same time, I know what the reviewer means when she says there are a number of places in the story where events are scary or off-putting to many readers. The author isn't trying to write a shocker or a gross-out book, but he tries hard to be honest about his youthful life, and along with the delightful experiences he had in developing his artistic talents, there were some disturbing events that left him confused and hurt at the time. People who know his wonderful children's picture books might not be prepared for this one, in which not everything is "sweetness and light." So the lone "two-star" reviewer has done an important favor in cautioning you what to expect.

Nonetheless, young people looking for books that reflect some of the hard realities of life -- or who at least can read about them without being too discouraged -- can gain a lot from reading this powerfully account of the good and the bad in the life of a very unusual boy who grew into a very unusual man.

This is the best because the japanese culture is a whole new unexplored area for us 'Americans', we hardly know anything about anything in countries like Japan or China and this book displays almost the whole life of an average kid in Japan. I myself know because I used to live there. I studied there for years and I had hobbies like reading their great manga and watching their anime and this story relates to a kid like me. I love this so please if you want a great reading experiance get this and if you do read it, really read it it is truly great.

Some people probably enjoy the story of a young girl standing up to what is presented to readers as a bizarre and repressive culture. However the book offers a biased, discriminating, and unflattering picture of life in Japan from the point of view of a young woman who was raised in America and apparently resents having been forced to move. She makes no effort to understand the cultural differences between the countries and completely fails to acknowledge the things that make Japan fascinating. Another reader concluded that May and Joseph finally "decide to make a home for themselves and adopt Japan by choice". The truth is they never adopted Japan but decided to stay there anyway.

Having lived in Japan for most of my adult life, I was quite shocked when my daughter brought this book home from school. She was born in Tokyo and we were living there until recently. Pretty pictures do not compensate for a story that misrepresents Japanese culture and glorifies a narrow-minded girl.

I had the occasion to see the original of the cover painting. A needle shot through my heart. I am a Japanese citizen, my mother tongue definitely Japanese, but I was brought up in the States until I was 9. When I came back, I was just so occupied to adapt and didn't realize that I was considerably lonely and uncomfortable. Worse, my parents' did not realize the fact that Japan was a new place for me, since for them, it had been their home land. Living in different places on the globe accordingly to my father's work did not end with this; we went as far as South Africa. I am now permanently in Japan, having living here for almost 15 years, but still cannot say it is my home. And there still isn't any specific place that I can call "home". I like to believe in the notion of home and belonging presented in this book, and to be able to find the strength that the girl had in breaking her way out to live as "herself" and "make a home" for herself.

TEA WITH MILK is about a young girl who lives in San Fransisco.When she was a young lady she went to Japan with her parents.She did not like sitting on her legs.Soon her parents wanted her to date a bank loner and she did not want to.Then she went to the city in Japan.She got a job there and got married. We loved TEA WITH MILK. I hope we get that good like Allen Says books.They are very evocative.

Grab your tamborine, put on your shouting shoes and get ready to be revived by Evangelist Myrtle Black. Majestic as an African Queen, eloquent in her sermons and fiercely proud, our good sister is the high priestess of the Spirit as well as an "in the closet" lesbian. Enraged over the shooting of two young prostitutes in Nashville, our minister embarks on a quest to form a coalition of all women to fight the sexist and racist atmosphere of the city's fathers (and some mothers). While doing this a soul stirring singer, whose self-esteem is at rock bottom meets this woman of the cloth. The relationship that develops between them will never be the same.

There you have it, all the elements of a good story. Issues of Black men's sexism, white women's racism, Black females reluctance to join a "women's movement" and the crass homophobia of the Black church are just waiting to be explored. Yet none of these issues come together in a story which has so much potential but is technically flawed. How is this?

1. Shockley gives a detailed explanation of the issues as if the reader doesn't or can't understand what is going on.

2. All of the characters are overly stereotyped to the point of being unbelievable.

3. She has very poor transitions. A character could be a gay hater in one paragraph and on the next page a converted person with no explanation of why.

4. Shockley deals with so many issues that the main plot gets lost and the story ends abruptly.

Shockley could have done much better. This story deserves a much better telling. I truly wanted to give this story at least a 4 star but after reading it I couldn't justify giving it those stars. As a collectors item of Black lesbian fiction this book will be an asset in your library but nothing more.

Miss Shockley does a marvelous job. This unique story of a sometimes horny lesbian Reverend and the woman that she falls in love with. It is extremely difficult to find stories in which we as black lesbians are depicted with grace, honesty, and dignity so gems like this book are all the more valueable. It can get very, i mean, very steamy at times so be prepared for the heat.

The first half of this book is charming commentary on the purpose of poetry in China, including historical notes on the more common themes, and brief notes on composition. The second half of the book is devoted to the actual poems, each one being dated, some including their sources and short biographies of the poet.

Written largely in the words of Leah Chase, herself, this book makes the reader feel he or she really KNOWS Leah Chase, and what a lady to know! She is a piece of our national history and a national treasure. Her willingness to express her opinions on just about everything evokes laughter as well as tears. Her life is awe-inspiring,sometimes humorous and sometimes sad. Leah Chase is one of those rare human beings who can walk with kings or sit on the floor with poor folks and be just as comfortable with either.