Dim Sum for Everyone!

My three year old daughter loves this book. She enjoys picking out her favorite pieces of dim sum in the book and then pointing out my favorites. The illustrations are beautiful. My daughter likes to bring the book with her when we go out for dim sum and then she matches up the food items at the restaurant with the pictures in the book. It is a good book to introduce dim sum to a child.

This book would be a terrific book to read before, during the long plane ride to China and while there for your child who is traveling with you to meet her new Mei Mei! Also can be brought along when you visit a actual Dim Sum restaurant both there in China and back home in your local Chinese restaurnant! Grace Lin drawings are simple, but beautifully done. She uses the Chinese names of each family member and also includes a brief 2 page history on Dim Sum as well as both their Chinese names and English. When we where in China for our daughter we visited a Dim Sum restaurant which was excellent! We tried the radish cakes and our favorite was the egg tarts! We did use our 2 fingers to tap to say thank you when our cups where refilled again. Our guide told us that saying thank you this way came about when the Emperor playing a game with a lady friend and if she got up to bow to say thank you for tea interupted the game they where each time, so the Emperor made up this way of saying thanks and not interupting his game.

My 2 yr old son absolutely loves this book! He can recite every single page! I grew up speaking Cantonese and I didn't know how to pronounce all the dim sum dishes, but Ms. Lin has helped by listing the most popular dim sum dishes with the English translation and Cantonese pronunciations at the end of the book. This book also contains very colorful illustrations and a little descriptive history on dim sum.As for "two shoes", that is what seems to come out of my son's mouth whenever he tries to say "dishes". :)

This book is the perfect introduction to dim sum. If you haven't tried it yet, take this book to a dim sum restaurant and use it to help pick your dishes--if you point to the picture of the dish on the endpapers, the waiters are sure to know what you want! Kids will love it, too. If you extra-daring, try the chicken feet! My favorite dish is the turnip or radish cake.I love Grace Lin's work--I have all of her books!

Each person in the family picks out something different as the cart with the little dishes comes around in the dim sum restaurant. With a sing-song rhythm, Lin describes the familiar ritual of a family having dim sum together, describing as she does so a bit of Chinese culture. "Little dishes on carts. Little dishes on tables...Everyone eats a little bit of everything." Her illustrations show a table full of brightly colored plates topped with small portions of various foods: fried shrimp, turnip cakes, sweet tofu, and little egg tarts. Ma-Ma, Ba-Ba, and the three daughters wear clothes with intricate patterns, set against a backdrop of swirls. The effect is a rich mesh of textures and a collage of little plates! Lin ends the book simply as she began it with the statement, "Now there are empty little dishes." She includes the history of the dim sum tradition at the end of the book, as well as small pictures of each dim sum dish, labeled in English and Chinese.