Amah Faraway by Margaret Chiu Greanias, illustrated by Tracy Subisak

 

Amah Faraway by Margaret Chiu Greanias,

illustrated by Tracy Subisak

Bloomsbury Children's Books, 2022, 40 pages

I love to read picture books about granddaughters and their grandmothers. I think it's because I never knew my grandmothers - one lived in Wales, the other lived in San Diego - but I knew that grandmothers were wonderful people to have in your life based on what I could see of friends who had nearby grandparents. 

Kylie, the young protagonist in Amah Faraway doesn't really know her grandmother, except through Saturday morning video chats because Kylie lives in San Francisco, Amah lived in Taipai. And when her mom announces that it is time to visit Amah, Kylie isn't too sure she wants to do that. Unlike Amah, who is really excited to see her daughter and granddaughter.

In Taipai, everything is unfamiliar: Amah's apartment, the language, the food and the relatives at the banquet they have for Kylie and her mom. Amah takes Kylie to all the places in Taipai that she loves, but none of it pleases her granddaughter: not the parks, not the night market, not even the Chinese donuts that Amah enjoys so much. 

But then, they visit the hot springs. The water is warm and Kylie loves splashing and playing in water, so she decides to give the hot springs (and Amah) a chance. And suddenly "it was a brand-new day" for Kylie and Amah as they splash around in the water together, laughing and having fun. But that's only half the story.

In the second half of the book, Kylie, her mom and her Amah revisit all the places they went to in the first half of the book - but now. everything is in reverse. And here's the interesting thing about the way it is done - the first half and the second half have almost the same wording but with different punctuation. And that change in punctuation is what reflects Kylie's change in attitude. Note the difference in these two images as Kylie, her mom, and her Amah visit the night market:

I read this book to my young readers, many of whom have grandparents living far away, and they loved the story, but they didn't see the change in text until we actually talked about it. The text is both gentle and lyrical, and the whimsical mixed media illustrations really reflect the sights and culture of Taipai. The text also includes speech bubbles written in both Mandarin characters and pinyin (phonetically written Chinese characters for pronunciation purposes). 

Be sure to check out the endpapers. The front endpapers have spot images of some of the things Kylie experiences in Taipai, labeled in English and the back endpapers have the same images labeled in Mandarin. Back matter includes A Note from the Author and the Illustrator, plus a description of the sights Kylie visited in Taipai and information about Taiwanese Food. 

You can download a Teacher's Guide, which I found very useful, for grades 1-3 HERE

You can also download a Teracher's Guide for grades 4-12 HERE

Pair Amah Faraway with When I Found Grandma by Saumiya Balasubramanian. Both are excellent stories about granddaughters and grandmothers, so different from each other, yet finding each other. 

This book was gratefully received from Faye Bi at Bloomsbury Publishing