Winter Stories: Asian Pacific American Heritage

These origami wreaths are assembled from a number of paper sheets that are folded and then cleverly slotted together. The ring itself is held together by the tension of the individual paper pieces using the techniques of modular origami. Full-color, step-by-step instructions help you fold and assemble these beautiful pieces that are designed with many different holidays in mind.

Twelve-year-old Sora and her family live under an iron set of rules in North Korea. But war is coming, and it is the perfect time to escape. The plan is simple: Sora and her family will walk hundreds of miles to the South Korean city of Busan from their tiny mountain village. When an incendiary bombing changes everything, Sora and her little brother Young will have to get to Busan on their own. Can a twelve-year-old girl and her eight-year-old brother survive three hundred miles of warzone in winter?

Xiao Ming and his mother are spending a winter day in the forest, and the snow is the perfect place to draw characters for words such as "tree" and "sparkling." Xiao Ming's mother helps him see the picture within each character — a trick sure to appeal to readers new to the Chinese written language. The colorful, intricate illustrations, created by cut-paper collages, will fascinate young children. This book is one of a four-part series by the author about Chinese characters related to the different seasons.

Every child feels different in some way, but Thuy feels "double different." She is Vietnamese American and she has two moms. Thuy walks home one winter afternoon, angry and lonely after a bully's taunts. Then a bird catches her attention and sets Thuy on an imaginary exploration. What if she could fly away like a bird? What if she could sprint like a deer, or roar like a bear? Mimicking the footprints of each creature in the snow, she makes her way home to the arms of her moms.

"A little mouse resides with his family in a leaky, old, leather boot that constantly needs repair. As winter approaches, the others are all for sealing themselves inside to shut out the cold. Robert has always yearned to play in the snow, so when he accidentally slips out of his window, he is delighted. Soon, however, he becomes lost and must be saved by a 'big animal' with red fur and blue eyes.

"When doctors told Lin and her husband that a cure for cancer was his greatest hope of survival, they decided to raise money for the Dana Farber Cancer Institute. Lin called upon fellow children's book authors and illustrators, and a project was born—each one would decorate a wooden snowflake that was then auctioned, raising over $100,000…Featuring reproductions of work by Eric Carle, David Shannon, Emily Arnold McCully, Eric Rohmann, Denise Fleming, Ian Falconer, and Lin herself, the book is a handsome showcase of art." — School Library Journal

A mother and her child get the ingredients for soup on a snowy day and then add everything to the pot. The pair plays snug and warm while the soup simmers until Dad comes home when they enjoy soup together. Crisp collage and a simple text make for a cozy read.

A child follows animal tracks in the snow, wondering aloud "Who made the tracks?/Where do they go?" Gentle illustrations depict the child's walk across a snowy landscape while animals watch from afar. Only upon returning home is it revealed that the tracks were made yesterday when the child was "Out playing in the snow!"

The narrator recalls his first Christmas in Japan and why his mother decorated a tree with a thousand paper cranes as she relives her holidays in California. Based on a family story, Say's illustrations evoke a holiday in two cultures.