The Dragon Lover and Other Chinese Proverbs

Grade 3-6-Images constructed of cut paper and collage embellish the artist’s bilingual versions of stories connected with five familiar Chinese sayings. The sayings teach various lessons. A lazy farmer starves while idly waiting for good luck to repeat itself. A musician learns to play what is appropriate to his audience. A crane and clam engage in a battle of wills that both lose. An old horse, using its long memory, leads a general’s army home. A man’s professed love of dragons reveals itself to be deep-rooted fear. The proverbs mentioned in the title are printed only in Chinese. The English text does not translate them as short, pithy sayings, but instead amplifies each well-known proverb with stories that read like fables. Bilingual source notes referring to specific works of Chinese literature are appended. Xuan provides modern adaptations of traditional Chinese paper cuts that are striking but somewhat cold. He employs a different style and different materials for each fable. While the book may be useful in bilingual classrooms, in schools where Chinese culture is studied intensively, or in public libraries where patrons read Chinese, the text is not gripping enough, or the art engaging enough, for wider purchase. —Amazon.com