"...more than just the story of a Chinese-American childhood; it's a fable for every kid born into a body and a life they wished they could escape. The fable is filtered through some very specific cultural icons: the much-beloved Monkey King, a figure familiar to Chinese kids the world over, and a buck-toothed amalgamation of racist stereotypes named Chin-Kee. Jin's hopes and humiliations might be mirrored in Chin-Kee's destructive glee or the Monkey King's struggle to come to terms with himself, but each character's expressions and actions are always perfectly familiar."
- From Publishers Weekly 2006.
"By placing photorealistic human figures in abstract, surreal environments, Tan evokes the intimacy of an individual immigrant experience without ever settling on a specific person, time or place. His drawings depict architecture and clothing that are at once historic and futuristic. Shadowy dragons’ tails haunt the Old Country, while the new land consists of structures and creatures that look like a 6-year-old’s drawings brought to three-dimensional life." - From The New York Times 2007.
"Say tells the story of how he became an artist through a vibrant blend of words and images. Beginning with his boyhood in World War II-era Japan, he traces his life-changing relationship with Noro Shinpei, an illustrious cartoonist who became his surrogate father figure and art mentor. Illustrations are richly detailed and infused with warmth. Exquisite use of light makes night scenes glow, and the mid-20th-century Tokyo setting is captured with vivid authenticity." - School Library Journal
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