Starred Review ALA Booklist (Fri Oct 01 00:00:00 CDT 1999)

Starred Review Recalling memories of her grandmother, who worked in a Seattle canning factory in the 1960s and 1970s, Look tells a quietly moving story of the recent Chinese American immigrant experience. Johnson's pastel-and-watercolor pictures capture the bond between Katie and her grandmother, happy together at home, where they cook Chinese and Katie teaches GninGnin how to dress a Barbie doll. Then Katie asks to spend a day at the cannery, and the pictures show the workers in the deafening noise and enveloping steam, swinging heavy mallets from dawn to dusk, cracking the shells of mountains of crab. The words are simple. The facts are stark. The backbreaking work earns very little money. It was all GninGnin could find (Nobody wants to hire an old woman who can't speak English). GninGnin doesn't eat crab (Tastes like hard work), but she cooks it with love as strong as ginger and with dreams for her granddaughter's future. This is a fine addition to the realistic stories of coming to America. (Reviewed October 15, 1999)

Horn Book (Sun Aug 01 00:00:00 CDT 1999)

Katie wants to be like her Chinese grandma, who works cracking crab at the local factory, but GninGnin has higher expectations for her. The dignity of GninGnin's labor shines through the simple words, while the food she cooks becomes a pungent metaphor--crab "made with love as strong as ginger and dreams as thick as black-bean paste." The small, square pastel and watercolor illustrations reflect the tone of quiet celebration.

Publishers Weekly (Fri Oct 06 00:00:00 CDT 2023)

Inspired by Look's memories of her Chinese immigrant grandmother, this nostalgic book is liberally sprinkled with Taishanese, and the feelings conveyed are just as authentic as the language. When Katie accompanies GninGnin, her grandmother, to the crab cannery, she learns how long and hard GninGnin works as she cracks 200 pounds of crab meat a day (and earns """"enough for bus fare and a fish for dinner... and someday, maybe enough to help you go to college""""). Filled with poetic details (in GninGnin's kitchen, salted fish hang """"like laundry above our heads""""), the narrative will appeal to all those immigrant families that sacrifice to provide their children with a better life. The first-time author doesn't flinch from describing the harsh conditions in the chong, or cannery, but her story focuses on the strength and dreams of the women who work there. When Katie is tired from standing, GninGnin informs her, """"There's only one place to sit--on the toilet upstairs."""" Katie asks, """"How do you keep going?"""" and her grandmother says, """"Don't you know that I'm a famous actress making a movie in a crab chong?... How can I give up when I'm the star?"""" Johnson's (Alphabet City) pastels, each framed with a plain, solid-colored border, favor close-up views, suggesting a series of intimate moments, even within the cannery. Sometimes sketchy, the illustrations imply a mood rather than tell a story, and in this way intensify the emotional content of the text. Ages 5-9. (May)

School Library Journal

Gr 1-4-Inspired by the author's memories of her grandmother, this gentle story is carefully and precisely told. On one of her Saturday visits to GninGnin's Chinatown apartment, Katie asks to see the crab cannery where her grandmother toils during the week along with other immigrant women. In a first-person narrative filled with sensory details, the girl conveys the harsh realities of work in the steamy, smelly factory. A day of cracking crabs and shaking out their meat earns only "...enough for bus fare and a fish for dinner...and someday, maybe enough to help you go to college." GninGnin keeps fatigue and boredom at bay by laughingly pretending to be a movie star. Johnson's expressive pastel-and-watercolor illustrations are rendered in muted colors and set within wide, softly colored margins. Focused on revealing sensations and emotions, the artwork is very different from the precise architectural depictions in Johnson's Alphabet City (Viking, 1995). Though they seem casual and loose, the illustrations are carefully composed, with gesture and expression contributing to the psychological depth of the poetic text. This account of a girl's loving relationship with her grandmother is dramatized with details as specific as the Taishanese dialect that they speak. From her, Katie learns that good food and dreams of a better future are important enough to work hard for, but that love is a sustaining gift.-Margaret A. Chang, Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts, North Adams Copyright 1999 Cahners Business Information.