Popo & Meimei Can Help

PreS-Gr 2–Young Meimei lives with her grandmother in a simple, spartan house with a backyard and a vegetable garden. At first, Popo helps Meimei with morning tasks: pouring the milk, doing her hair, putting on her jacket, and harvesting the vegetables. Along the way, in speech bubbles, Meimei communicates in English and Popo communicates in Mandarin. A transliteration of each hanzi is written above it in a smaller font, and then marked by an asterisk which corresponds to an English translation at the bottom of the page. As the day unfolds, Meimei has a chance to help Popo when a telephone call in English requires the child to take the call. Here the full-bleed spread uses a simple array of letters and the characters’ expressions to convey the universal confusion of listening to speech in a language one cannot yet understand. Wu’s pleasingly simple character illustrations recall the style of Bruna’s Miffy, and the sherbet-hued landscapes, when they appear, add warmth and depth to the setting.