Chow Mein and Potstickers

This should be required reading for students who are interested in living abroad. Fabulous.

Chan is living in a new country and he wants to meet his neighbours. He is hoping to make some friends. Every friend he meets is from a different country including England, South Africa, Afghanistan, Italy and more. This is a great book to teach about the multi-culturalism in communities. The children teach each other how to say hello and good-bye. They also share their favourite foods from their native countries. There is a mini dictionary entry on each page showing the native words used, what they mean and how to pronounce them. Chan also finds out what all his new friends' parents do for a living. This is a great book to use when learning about other countries. It would be a great one to use to introduce that unit. It could also be used when learning about community helpers and jobs. This is a great jumping off point before doing research projects or presentations on heritage. The students will love ending this unit with a heritage lunch showcasing their favourite foods.

Chow Mein and Potstickers is a wonderfully diverse book that teaches children how alike they are no matter skin tone or place of birth. 

Chan is a little boy from China that has moved to a new country and is looking to learn more about his new environment and neighbors. Many of his neighbors are immigrants too, and each neighbor has a unique story they relate to Chan explaining where they originate from and what they enjoy doing. Chan discovers he has a lot in common with his neighbors and picks up some new vocabulary from each of his neighbors in their own native language. 

Such a wonderful book for the age range that highlights a person's uniqueness as well as similarities.

Have I ever told you all how much I love picture books?  Cause I do.  There is something so wonderful about young children, their innocence and their general inquisitive nature that we can really do with more of lately.  Children just want to do things like play, and eat, and make friends (which honestly, is kind of how I want to live my life too). Picture books provide me with a way of getting back all those wholesome feelings of my time as a child and also reminding me of what I want to project out in the world each day.

Chan moves to a new neighborhood and a new country.  He lived in China and he wants to explore his new surroundings.  He lives in the most multi-cultural neighborhood ever, and in his travels meets children from Bosnia, Indonesia, Poland (and I see you Ania with your two dads.  I LOVE THIS), Afghanistan, Turkey (Nuray - I see you and your stay at home dad while the mom works! Yes!), Belgium, Suriname, England, South Africa, and Italy.  

Each new child brings new opportunities to learn about the different cultures.  They all have ways of saying hello and goodbye and they all have different favorite foods.  Who doesn't love to eat?  Chan gets to sample some of their favorites while learning about their families (my only thought during this was it would have been nice to maybe have one kid with a one parent household, but honestly, this books has so much diversity with the cultures and families that I ain't even mad.) and at the end, he sets up a playground buffet with his favorite foods, you guessed it, chow mein and potstickers (Chan, me too.  Seriously, that is some good eating right there).

Parents, children, and teachers can do so much with this book.  Embracing different cultures and understanding that families come in all different ways is one of the most important things I think we need to impress upon our young ones.  There are geography lessons that can be taught from this book as well.  Overall, it is a fabulous book that I cannot wait to see in the hands of children today.  Now I am going to go find me some foods because this book has made me seriously hungry!

This is a great book to teach children about diversity.   It also has  some language lessons.   I would buy this book for my granddaughter.