HOW WE SAY I LOVE YOU

“My family loves me, and I love them. But we don’t use words to say ‘I love you.’ ”

As a child narrates, readers see a smiling mother, father, grandmother, and grandfather bustle about a cheery, colorful home doing chores. The narrator explains how each family member expresses their love with actions: Mom “stirs her love into a pot of steaming xī fàn” (Mandarin Chinese and Taiwanese Hokkien words are sprinkled throughout and defined in a glossary), Ah Gong walks the child to school in the morning, Ah Ma packs a lunch of noodles, and Dad cheers and encourages from the sidelines of a soccer game. The child also shows love, saying, “I do my best at school so they can feel proud.” Some readers may wonder: Is Chen implying that the family’s reticence when it comes to verbally expressing their love is rooted in their being Chinese? Or is this a Chinese family that happens to be less verbally demonstrative? That’s left up to readers to decide; regardless, it’s abundantly clear from the detailed spreads and expressiveness of the characters that they are full of love for one another, with or without words. (This book was reviewed digitally.)

A warm embrace of a book.