Shanghai Messenger by Andrea Cheng, Illustrated by Ed Young

I guess I’m the picture book gal of our duo. I was thinking about picture books in which American kids travel to a foreign country, and my favorite one immediately came to mind: Shanghai Messenger by Andrea Cheng, Illustrated by Ed Young.

Shanghai Messenger isn’t exactly a picture book. Its audience is closer to middle grades because the story is told in poems, and it captures so beautifully all the different emotions that an eleven-year-old would encounter when visiting a foreign country by herself for the first time.

There are so many themes going on simultaneously: Xiao Mei is half Chinese and half Caucasian, and her grandmother’s family in Shanghai invites her for a visit. Xiao Mei must first decide if she wants to accept the invitation.

In China
will people stare
at my eyes
with green flecks
like Dad’s?
Will they ask
why didn’t Grandmother
teach me Chinese?

What I love about Cheng’s poems is how amazingly true, and how strong of an emotional impact her few words create. I can feel Xiao Mei’s apprehension as she leaves the US, and when she first arrives in China. Then, each of her family members she meets in Shanghai has a character that is typically Chinese while uniquely their own. And though I am not of mixed heritage, I could also relate to how Xiao Mei feels like an “other” in China. Being American is enough.

In America
everyone thinks I’m Chinese
even though my dad’s not,
and here too
people stare at me
in the street.
I guess Max and I
are half and half
everywhere
in the world.

Xiao Mei’s relatives take her sightseeing, shopping for a computer, to the market to buy vegetables and a live duck for dinner. She meets ladies practicing Tai Chi in a park. She befriends a little boy and visits the school where her great Uncle taught. She and her relatives sing songs from The Lion King in English and Chinese all at once. Every experience is exquisitely detailed in spare language, but I can feel exactly what Xiao Mei feels.

By the end of the week, Xiao Mei now has to say good-bye to this big new family she has met.

I wish they could come with me.
We could fill a whole row
or two
on the plane
and share spicy peas
and watch the movie
and sleep.
The flight attendant
leads me down the ramp.
I turn
and uncles and aunties and cousins
wave
and disappear
in a crowd
of black hair.