It's the Book Club for Kids.
It's the Book Club for Kids.
It's the Book Club for Kids podcast.
Hi, I'm Kitty Felde.
This week we tell an immigrant's tale set in Minnesota.
The book is Maisie Chen's Last Chance.
Writer Lisa Yee says the book was inspired by her own family story.
I was thinking about my family history.
I was looking at an old picture of of my mom's family when they came over from china and started thinking about it, but i had never written about it before.
And finally i decided you know, now's the time in the book maisie feels like she's stuck entertaining her grandfather.
So she comes up with a plan.
What's this?
He eyes the cards i put in front of him.
I was hoping you'd teach me how to play poker.
Opa shakes his head.
I haven't played in three years.
What's the matter?
Afraid I'll beat you?
That's our celebrity reader, public radio journalist Josie Huang from LAist.
Our readers are from Overland Elementary School in Los Angeles and they talk about their own relationships with their own grandparents.
Why do you think that our grandparents relate to us through food?
Because that's my grandma.
That's how she shows her love.
This is the Book Club for Kids, the show where kids talk about books.
We'll tell you how you can be on the show a little later on, but first, let's meet our readers.
Hello, my name is Mila.
Hello, my name is Charbel.
Hello, my name is Maya, and we're all fifth graders at Overland Elementary in Los Angeles.
So the book is Macy Chen's Last Chance by Lisa Yee.
What is it about?
Maisie Chen's Last Chance is about Maisie Chen, who goes to Last Chance to visit her sick grandparents, Oma and Opa, and she uncovers the mysteries about her family's past.
We should explain.
Is Last Chance a thing or a person or a place or what?
Last Chance is a town in Minnesota.
And what's it like?
It's sort of old and has, like, really crusty, dusty, musty buildings.
And there's a restaurant at the center of it.
What is it like?
It is the Golden Palace, and it feels like home to everyone.
Opa and Oma own it, and they run it, and they love to make people feel home.
Well, our title character is Maisie Chan.
What is she like?
She's super well, from what I read, she's super outgoing and she just loves her grandparents so much.
She's also kind and brave and always wants the best for people.
She loves meeting new friends, and she has a best friend named Ginger.
And she makes new friends in this town.
Who else is in this town?
Logan, and there's a girl named Eva as well.
Logan is a boy who lives around there, and Eva runs a shop.
She also has a friend named Riley, who also she thought was bad, but she actually realized she's a nice person inside.
Well, what's so special about this restaurant?
It's Chinese food, and Meiji Chen's family is Chinese.
And what do we learn about Maisie's family?
Well, we learn that Maisie is a third-generation Chinese, so she's a Chinese-American and she loves uncovering mysteries.
And what's the mystery she's uncovering in this book?
Who stole Bud the Bear?
All right, what the heck is Bud the Bear?
It's a statue that's been there for more than three generations.
And why is there a bear in front of this restaurant?
Well, in their past history There's Lucky Chen and they got Bud the Bear and he was there for a while and he's been attempted to be like her and he's a wooden statue.
Maisie learns all about Lucky from her grandfather, and he has a long story to tell.
What do you remember from this story?
Well, he basically tells Maisie all about Lucky Chen, his grandfather, the grandpa's, and how they came to Last Chance Minnesota.
Lucky Chen's family saved up enough money for Lucky so he could go to America and find a job and make them rich.
And he ended up going to Mr Phillips' house where he got a job and he ended up making a bit of money.
But then he had to move.
Police were very racist at that time and thought that he was bad.
So he used his money and used it for the train.
Facebook tackles racism over the generations.
Talk a little bit about that.
Maisie Chen tries to fight her prejudice.
And also some people left a ransom note to give 1000 yen, which is Japanese currency.
They left a note that also said a very bad word to them.
Let's talk a little bit about the relationship between Maisie and her grandfather.
Well, for a while, Maisie had only met her grandfather once and they came.
But since her mom is a fake food designer for commercials, they got scared and they thought why is she doing this?
Because they run a real restaurant and then they left.
So the first time she ever saw him after that was when she had to visit him.
Does Maisie enjoy the time she spends with her grandfather?
At first, she thinks it's just a waste of her time and summer.
But then once the grandfather tells her about the lucky stories, she gets really involved.
Well, let's listen to the part of the book where Maisie comes up with a way to relate to her grandfather.
Our celebrity reader is public radio journalist Josie Wong.
There's not a lot to do here.
I miss Ginger.
I've been in Last Chance for almost a week.
And my closest friend is Opa, and he's in his 80s.
My mother asked me to keep him company.
Not that my grandfather isn't fun, but all he wants to do is be at the Golden Palace, and mom wants him to spend more time at home where he can rest.
What's this?
He eyes the cards I put in front of him.
I was hoping you'd teach me how to play poker.
Opa shakes his head.
I haven't played in three years.
What's the matter?
Afraid I'll beat you?
I say, grinning.
A playful look lights up his face.
Go get the poker chips.
There are so many rules.
I search for something I can use to write them all down.
But the only thing I can find is a blank guest check pad for taking customers' orders.
We each start with five cards in the game he's teaching me, but you can swap some of them out.
Then you bet on your hand the combination of cards you have and the goal is to win all the poker chips.
It's not just the cards you're dealt.
It's what you do with them that matters most, Opa tells me.
After about an hour, we take a snack break.
Opa holds up a fortune cookie.
He loves them so much that I brought a whole box home.
The kind wrapped in foil are more expensive, but classy.
Last year, Mom and I went to a fortune cookie factory in San Francisco, I tell Opa.
They ride on a conveyor belt.
Then someone puts a fortune in the middle of each cookie and shapes them by hand while they're still warm.
I fold a napkin to show Opa.
He nods with approval.
Hardly anyone in China eats them, but Americans expect them when they go to Chinese restaurants.
They think they're good luck.
Are they?
Opa winks.
They are if you want them to be.
What's your relationship with your grandparents?
Do you have a particular older relative that you guys like to hang out with or are they just boring?
Well, my grandma, she likes to make food and stuff.
Sometimes I like to help her, and she's very kind.
What's your favorite thing to cook with your grandmother?
She makes a lot of Vietnamese food, so I like it when she makes spring rolls.
My grandma and grandfather likes also to cook and my favorite thing that my grandma likes to cook is the bule, and I like to make it with her.
It's like a salad.
Well, my grandma, who lives...
In Europe, she's now alone because my grandfather recently died, just like Maisie's.
But she also likes to make food.
She loves to make desserts.
So we get plump over the summer.
What's your favorite dessert that she makes?
It's like a big donut, but it's like a cake.
Why do you think that our grandparents relate to us through food?
Because that's my grandma.
That's how she shows her love.
Poker plays a big part in this book.
Talk a little bit about why do you think the author included that?
When Maisie's mom and her grandma are fighting a lot, she keeps her poker face on, so nobody knows how she's feeling.
In the book, poker shows a bit of Maisie's opa and his best friend's Werner.
It shows their past and how they used to play poker a lot.
I knew most of the history that Opa tells her, except all about paper sons.
I had never heard that before.
Can you explain what paper sons are?
When the government said that oh, only people who are originally from here or have been living here this many years are only allowed to stay and everyone else is only allowed to visit at this certain time of year.
So the Paper Sons pretended to be sons of other Chinese people, and then they came to America.
Maisie's grandfather and his grandfather.
They helped the Paper Sons find a job and have a job and live.
There's a couple of quotes in the book I want you guys to tell me about.
One of them is, not everything illegal is wrong.
What does that mean?
What does that mean to you?
So I remember Maisie's grandma Oma saying that she means like, because when the government unfairly made laws against people, she meant if people break the rules, it doesn't necessarily mean that what they're doing is wrong.
Can you see that happening in your lives around school or anything else?
I think maybe sometimes if someone's stealing to help their family, I think that isn't wrong.
I think they're just trying to live their life.
Well, I don't relate to anything at school, but in the book it shows how back then many people were racist towards Asians so they would tell everyone that doing stuff that the Asians did was illegal.
Do you guys see incidences of racism today?
Even my friends say some racist things, and it's just not really funny, but they think it's a joke.
What do you do to react to that?
Well, sometimes I say, hey, that's not really funny because that has a deep meaning.
It's really racist.
So Maisie is from Los Angeles, and there's one thing she says.
There's always something to do in Los Angeles.
Really?
Do you guys agree or disagree?
Something that I really like to do in Los Angeles and, since Los Angeles is near a coast, I sometimes go to the Santa Monica Beach or the beach in Malibu, and I like to swim a lot.
In Los Angeles there's always some type of new modern art exhibit, so I love to go to all the new ones.
Are you an artist yourself?
Yes, I love to draw.
So this book reminded me of another book. which I'll tell you in a minute.
But I wanted to ask you first, does this book remind you of anything else you've ever read?
I think it's reminded me a little bit of a book called Front Desk.
And it also has a lot of racism in it.
You know what this one reminded me of was Holes.
In Holes.
It shows kids being unfairly treated because some people think they did a bad crime, but they really didn't.
And this shows, just like Lucky, he got framed for something that he never did.
Did you like the book?
Yes, I love this book so much.
Why?
Because it shows a lot of lessons that Maisie learns.
I also like this book, and something to add on to what Mila said is I feel like I can relate to Maisie for some things.
For example, when her grandpa died, she said, what is wrong with me?
I never cried.
And I didn't cry when my grandpa died, and I felt the exact same thing.
I love this book and I'd really recommend it because I love how, like, I love the mystery.
I love mysteries.
That's your favorite genre?
Yeah.
Do you guys have some questions for writer Lisa Yee?
How did you come up with the story?
Coming up with the story was well, you know it took a lifetime to come up with it because I was thinking about my family history.
I was looking at an old picture of my mom's family when they came over from China and started thinking about it, but I had never written about it before.
And finally I decided, you know, now's the time.
Is this a true story or not?
And if it's not, does this relate to something you've been through?
It is a true story and it is fiction.
It is both.
I grew up, I was born and raised in Los Angeles.
And when I was a young adult, I moved to Florida, where there were very few Chinese Americans, and people started asking me where are you from?
And your English is so good and all these kinds of things, that I had never thought about that before.
And so I started thinking about the kind of fish out of water story.
And then I coupled that with I had noticed that there were so many Chinese restaurants all across the country.
It seems like every little city had a Chinese restaurant.
And I thought, how did they get there?
And so I started doing research about the Chinese coming to America.
And all that melded together into the book.
How long did it take you to write it?
It took me well, it took me my whole lifetime to write it, because a lot of it is about my life or, you know, my family and my upbringing.
But to write the book itself, it took about two years.
And I was writing it during COVID.
So during that time, there was nothing else going on.
I couldn't leave the house.
So I was able to focus on it.
But what had happened, though, was at one point when there was a massacre of Asian Americans, I became paralyzed and I couldn't write at all.
And I decided that I was going to quit writing the book because I just couldn't do anything.
And then I decided, what can I do to help?
What can I do to address this issue that's going on?
And I thought, I can finish writing this book.
How many words was the book?
A lot.
I don't know the actual number of words, maybe 45,000, maybe 55,000.
It was much longer to begin with because the story toggles between Maisie's great great grandfather Lucky, in the past and Maisie's story in the present.
And Lucky's story started taking over at one point.
And I realized, oh, my gosh, this is not about Lucky.
This is about Maisie.
So I had to cut it.
And so I probably, you know, at one point it was 50% lucky, 50% Maisie.
And then I cut it down to 20% lucky, 80% Maisie.
What are your favorite books and why do you recommend it?
My favorite books?
Well, Growing up, I loved this book called Honestly, Katie John by Mary Calhoun.
It was about this misunderstood tomboy.
And that's who I was.
I was kind of a loner.
And I read it like, I don't know, maybe 100 times.
I would check it out from the library over and over.
I decided that when and if I became a mom and I had a daughter, I would name her Katie.
And now I have a daughter named Katie, although she goes by Kate.
Your turn, Josie Wong.
What is your favorite book?
Anne of Green Gables is one of the most memorable books from my childhood.
It's about a very imaginative and determined girl named Anne with an E.
She's a real original, but she wasn't even my favorite character.
I really loved her adoptive family of Matthew and Marilla.
And when I reread the book several years ago to my kids, I was surprised by how sharply the characters were written and how I found myself laughing and crying, like I was reading it for the first time, which I guess is what happens when it's been decades since you picked up the book.
Well, what about you guys?
What are your favorite books?
I would choose this book called Rick.
It's about a boy and he goes off to middle school and he has a best friend and his best friend can be very rude.
And Rick is like learning about some like different things that people are experiencing in middle school.
And why do you like it?
Because it shows a lot about like learning.
It even gave me a few lessons.
It showed that, like if It's not okay to be rude or discriminating against people, and I showed why because it's just not okay.
Everyone should be equally accepted.
So my favorite book is Amulet because it shows a lot of character development and it has lots of mystery and action to it.
Well, Amulet is one of our episodes, and you can listen to a conversation about it at our website, bookclubforkidsorg.
My favorite book?
Well, I have many, but one of them is called The City of Ember.
And it's about a boy and a girl who live in a dark place that has lights, but the lights are starting to flicker and they have shortages of supplies and they're not sure what they should do.
We will send you all the information.
That's K-I-T-T-Y at bookclubforkids.org.
This episode is funded in part by the Los Angeles County Department of Arts and Culture.
Thank you.
And thanks this week as well to producer Chad Francis.
Brandon Baker composed our theme with additional music from Andrew Walton.
Emma Steinkellner designed our logo.
Thanks to our writer Lisa Yee and our celebrity reader, public radio journalist Josie Wong.
And thanks to our readers this week Mila Charbel, Maya and their teacher, Elaine Park, from Overland Elementary School in Los Angeles.
We have a free newsletter for teachers, parents and librarians full of free tips about how to turn kids into lifelong readers.
You can sign up at the website, bookclubforkids.org.
And, by the way, the makers of the Book Club for Kids have created a very different kind of podcast, a mystery about the 10-year-old daughter of a congressman who solves mysteries on the US.
Capitol and teaches civics along the way.
It's based on the Fina Mendoza series of books which, by the way, just won the Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators Spark Award.
The podcast is called The Fina Mendoza Mysteries and it's available now for free.
Wherever you listen to podcasts.
I'm Kitty Felde.
Thanks so much for listening.
