THE GLOBE & MAIL, SATURDAY, JANUARY 26, 2006 BY SUSAN PERREN

Fragrant Garden is a restaurant owned by nine-year-old Jade’s parents “in the middle of Chinatown, squeezed between a Chinese herbal pharmacy and a gift shop displaying jade and plastic treasures from the Orient.” It’s a busy place, especially on Sunday nights. Jade lends a hand by bagging the takeout orders, refilling the bottles of soy sauce and the salt and pepper shakers, and helping indecisive diners choose what to order.

But more than anything, Jade wants to help by manning the cash register. She begs to be allowed to do this important job, but her father’s answer is always no: “It’s too much responsibility. You’re too young to know what to do.” Jade knows she can do it and attempts to prove her worthiness by carrying trays into the kitchen and taking telephone orders. When both of these activities end in near disasters, Jade retreats to a stool in the kitchen.

The cooks don’t mind her sitting there, although they do remind her that the kitchen with its hot stoves and sharp knives is a dangerous place for children. From her stool, wedged between the huge refrigerator and sacks of rice, Jade has “a ringside seat to the nightly show that would soon begin.”

It’s a show brought to life in words and in Josée Bellemare’s charming illustrations. Duelling woks appear to chase bok choy, beef and chop suey “around in circles,” a large red fish is dressed in radish roses and shaded by a parasol, and one of the cooks, the thin one, sings songs from Chinese opera.

In the midst of all this chaos, only sharp-eyed Jade notices the flames that burst out of one of the sizzling woks, and only Jade has the presence of mind to put a lid on the wok, which extinguishes the fire. It’s a safety tip she learned when the fire department visited her school. Her father rewards her with a promise to begin teaching her how to use the cash register, and a big bowl of ice cream.

MONTREAL REVIEW OF BOOKS, SPRING / SUMMER 2006, BY CAROL-ANN HOYTE

Day's Lee tells stories to teach her nieces and nephews about family history. The Montreal author drew on her memories of working in her parents' restaurant for The Fragrant Garden (Napoleon Publishing).

On Sunday evenings, nine-year-old Jade works at her family's restaurant. Yearning to perform more exciting tasks, she asks her father to teach her how to work the cash register. He refuses, believing her to be too young to handle such a great responsibility. One evening a small fire breaks out in the kitchen. Jade is there with the cooks, and she extinguishes the flaming wok with an pot lid. When her father learns of her quick thinking and responsible effort, he rewards her with ice cream and a promise to let her learn how to operate the cash register.

Lee's feel-good story conveys the positive and encourage message that children, no matter how young, are capable of significant feats. The varied forms (spot art, landscape, vertical, and horizontal) of Josée Bellemare's artwork lend the book visual appeal.

Carol-Ann Hoyte is Quebec regional coordinator for Canadian Children's Book Week

QUILL & QUIRE, JANUARY / FEBRUARY 2006

The Fragrant Garden is set in the New World, in a restaurant where the concern is not tilling the fields but running the till. Author Day’s Lee based the story on her memories of helping out in her family’s restaurant in Montreal’s Chinatown. The main character is Jade, a little girl whose ambition is to work at the cash register but whose father thinks she is too young. She sets out to change his mind by making herself useful around the restaurant, and after a series of near-mishaps, she succeeds in her ambition by preventing a major kitchen fire. She conquers adversity by persevering. She’s more of an explorer than an endurer.

The words and pictures in this book marry particularly well. It’s a first children’s book for both the author and illustrator, who seem to share a love of movement. (The illustrator, Josée Bellemare, is also an animator.) For instance, one scene elevates the routine cooking of a stir-fry into a dramatic skirmish: “The short cook threw a family of bok choy / in with slices of beef, / and they tumbled about, wrestling this way and that.” The accompanying picture shows two cooks busy with their woks, elbows flying and vegetables dancing.

The Fragrant Garden offers lighter fare which may make it easier for young children to digest.

UNIVERSITY OF MANITOBA, CM VOL. XII NUMBER 12, FEBRUARY 17, 2006, 

BY HUAI-YANG LIM

The recent proliferation of Chinese Canadian literature has represented Chinese Canadian experiences and heritage in positive ways for a wider audience. Many authors have represented Chinese Canadians' experiences in adult-targeted works of fiction, autobiography, short story collections, and even anthologies devoted specifically to Chinese Canadian work such as Swallowing Clouds and Many-Mouthed Birds. However, the body of works by authors of Chinese Canadian descent is still relatively small. Day's Lee's The Fragrant Garden is an engaging story for young children that is both an individual narrative about a young Chinese girl's attempts to help her father as well as a communal narrative about the day-to-day running of a Chinese restaurant. In depicting these two aspects, Lee creates a positive representation of Chinese Canadian experience that goes beyond the stereotypical representations that have historically informed the public's perceptions of Chinese Canadians. 

Written in the third person, Lee's story depicts a determined and strong female protagonist, Jade, who takes the initiative to assist the other adult employees in her father's Chinese restaurant. Readers will be able to identify with the story's protagonist and the difficulties that she encounters when she tries to help. The familiar adult phrase, “You're too young,” will resonate with kids who want to help, but who have parents who say that they are too young or that something is too much responsibility for them to handle. While Jade is allowed to help out with setting the tables and packing customers' take-out orders, her father tells her that she is too young to use the cash register because it involves a lot of responsibility. As a result, Jade tries to show her father that she is old and responsible enough in the rest of the story. She fails in her first two attempts to do so, but she succeeds in a third attempt that arises out of an unforeseen situation. Lee's positive portrayal of Jade, who saves the restaurant from catching fire, is believable and within the limits of what a child of her age can do.
 
Besides depicting Jade, Lee evokes the communal nature of the restaurant as not simply a place of work, but also a place of camaraderie. Lee conveys the hectic nature of the restaurant during the dinner rush through her descriptions of activities that occur simultaneously and in quick succession, which also include numerous and well-chosen verbs to describe the restaurant workers' actions. At the same time, the cooks joke with each other while they prepare meals for their customers. In her descriptions of the cooks, which are narrated through Jade, Lee also conveys cooking as not only an act of physical labour, but also as an art that requires commitment and creativity. Jade sits down to observe the “nightly performance” during which the cooks cut up, stir-fry, and dress up the food in a skillful manner. For instance, Jade admires the ways in which they dress up the fish and cut up some of the vegetables so that they look like blossoming flowers.

Josée Bellemare's colour illustrations effectively complement the story that unfolds both for Jade and the other restaurant workers. Some illustrations are close-up shots of Jade that bring readers closer to her reactions and encourage them to identify with her feelings of frustration and enjoyment throughout. Other illustrations provide more expansive shots of the restaurant, particularly the cooks who are working in the kitchen, and these help to convey the hectic and communal atmosphere that Lee establishes throughout her story. The attention to detail, such as in Bellemare's illustrations of the street surrounding Jade's father's restaurant as well as the various items in the restaurant's kitchen, all contribute to the illustrations' sense of realism.

Overall, Lee's story provides a good introduction to the experience of working in a Chinese restaurant. The book's suggested age group is for ages five and up. While the language would be easier for older kids, younger kids can still follow the general thread of the story's plot. Teachers could use this book as part of a broader unit on minority cultures in Canada to introduce students to contemporary Chinese Canadian life and culture. However, it would be important for teachers to locate these representations of Chinese Canadians alongside other ones that have persisted in Canadian history and, to some degree, in the present. Literary and media representations of Chinese Canadians have not consistently acknowledged their diversity and have had racist undertones historically. For instance, they have homogenized and stereotyped Chinese Canadians by portraying them in reductive ways and within restricted settings such as the restaurant, laundromat, and convenience store. Lee's story does take place in an identifiable occupational setting that has historically been associated with Chinese immigrants and their descendants, but Lee does present her characters as individuals rather than as a homogenous group. Nevertheless, it would be important for teachers to highlight the diversity of occupations in which contemporary Chinese Canadians are engaged. The presence of Chinese Canadians, and Asians in general, in television shows and movies today remains relatively small and, more often than not, continues to portray them in ways that do not adequately represent their population's diversity. As a result, kids may potentially harbour misconceptions about what Chinese Canadians do that teachers, librarians, and even parents could address in discussing this book with a young audience.