Lulu Cheng was born in Taipei, Taiwan and moved to the United States for college. Her love of books and learning intensified as she followed her passion to become an elementary teacher in Los Angeles, California. Once having her own children, she realized how important it was to her to raise them to be bilingual and biliterate. Her passion for passing on her language and culture to her own children sparked a fire inside of her to create books and learning materials in Chinese. She currently resides in Los Angeles, CA with her husband and two children where she enjoys planning family trips, taxiing her kids to their extracurriculars, and finding the best ice cream spots around town. Lacey Benard was born in and grew up in Los Angeles. From a very early age, she loved all kinds of art, especially freehand scrapbooking and cardmaking using nothing but scissors, a Sharpie, and scraps of colored paper. She spent over a decade as a classroom teacher and eventually worked her way up to a school administrator role. While on hiatus from the field of education as she started her family, the opportunity to tap into her love of papercutting cute art presented itself through the creation of Bitty Bao. She currently resides in Dana Point, CA with her husband and two children where she enjoys catching all of her children's small moments, exploring new places, and eating yummy food.
One pot of tea, 2 lotus-wrapped rice, 3 beef rice rolls, and 4 BBQ pork buns kick off this delectable introduction to counting and Chinese cuisine--and the snacks keep coming until readers reach 10 sesame balls. Extremely adorable cut-paper collage illustrations plate up the food, each piece with a cute face and unique expression, which rests against a solid-color background. Each double-page spread contains a surprising amount of information for its simple, uncluttered layout. The featured number is printed in a large, white font--both as a numeral and written out--beneath which the food name is written in a slightly smaller, yellow font. For the Chinese portion of the bilingual text, Mandarin is used with traditional characters, Zhuyin (phonetic notation), and Pinyin (Romanized spellings), and Cantonese and simplified Chinese editions will be released in February 2024. Along the bottom of each spread is a counting line that highlights the numbers already learned, reinforcing the sequence and vocabulary, and a dim sum picture glossary concludes with labeled food photos. This sturdily constructed, irresistible board book is a must-purchase for any library serving a Chinese community.--Julia Smith ""Booklist, Starred Review"" (9/1/2023 12:00:00 AM)