In the Snow (1995)

In the Snow by Huy Vodun Lee (1995) is a narrative introduction to the Chinese language. The first page lists  five Mandarin Chinese characters alongside pictorial representations, English translations, and pronunciations. The story is about a mother and child’s walk in a snowy landscape. “The ground is a canvas of white” on which Xiao Ming and her son practice writing. She begins with tree, then doubles this to write forest. Then “three strokes next to the character for forest” creates the word pond. This gentle stroll on a winter day gave me some appreciation for how different the English and Chinese languages are from one another. I wondered what effect language has upon how speakers perceive and think about the world. This is a large book and the illustrations fill every page with wide expanses of snow dotted by trees, children, and wildlife. The jacket flap indicates the pictures are cut paper art.