Dumplings and a Dragon For a Somerville Writer

Editor's note: This article originally appeared in Back Bay Patch as part of that site's "Mom Talk" column. It's about Grace Lin, a children's book author who, according to her website, lives in Somerville and has appeared NBC's Today Show. We wanted to share the column with Somerville.

In my favorite children's books, the writer and illustrator are one; two talents residing in a single gifted artist who can create beauty in both words and pictures.

Grace Lin is one of those artists. Recently, for Lunar New Year, she was everywhere in our house. Not only have we been reading her picture book about the holiday, but on Jan. 21 she held a book launch for her newest novel, "Dumpling Days." 

When you attend a Grace Lin book launch – patronizing an independent bookstore, standing in line – you leave with not just an autographed book, but with what kids have come to expect from any party: the goodie bag.

Now, think how hard it is to impress this on our children: that nowhere else in the USA are kids regularly going to victory parades for their football-baseball-basketball-hockey teams. Nor does everyone walk (OK, we could have, but we drove) down the street to MIT, where you can see the coolest geeks in the country show their flying car. Well, literary stars like Grace Lin live here in our midst too, and we are the lucky beneficiaries.

A Grace Lin goodie bag is a freebie full of small treasures and it is a lot of work. For her. Contents of bag to celebrate the publishing of "Dumpling Days": Two pieces of Japanese candy. One recipe card. One Chinese New Year red envelope, with a message (not money) inside. And one tiny, hand-painted wooden doll. 

The doll, which is really a 1-3/4" vision of Ms. Lin as a little girl, wears in pink paint the dress that her character, Pacy, wears in the book. This is indeed a likeness of Lin herself, evidenced in the book jacket photo of the sisters in pink jumpers visiting Taiwan in the 1980s. There are even meticulous, metallic-paint buttons detailing the doll.
 
The recipe on the card is for Chinese dumplings, of course. But it is no download from the Web, uh-uh. It is a loving letter from Lin's parents, plus the recipe by her mom, and illustrations for how to pleat dumplings by Lin. 

What kind of person puts so much effort into such a task just for her fans? A person who'll make a great mom, that's who.    

On her blog, Lin feels the need to explain why she didn't bake cupcakes for this launch, while she made dozens for the book that came before. "… With Rain Dragon coming, I think my time for planning big parties with elaborate goodie bags might be over," Lin writes.

"Rain Dragon" is her first baby-to-come, so called because this is the year of the dragon, the most auspicious sign on the Chinese zodiac. ("Rain," or water, is one of the five elements that, along with 12 animals, is associated with the years in the zodiac cycle.)   

But as lucky as a dragon baby is said to be, it's more hard work than good fortune that has brought Lin success and recognition. Awards such as the Newbery Honor and Geisel Honor followed the publication of both her last novel and her first early reader in just the past two-and-a-half years. 

She's been published for more than a decade, and while her Taiwanese background was never part of her strategy to getting there in an era of demand for minority voices, Lin has "come to terms" with the role of multicultural author. She creates her books while remembering what it was like as a child not to have any Asian characters in American literature to relate to. You can see in Lin's bookstore audiences and the voices on her Facebook fan page that families of all kinds appreciate her work, not least the parents of adopted Chinese children who strive to give their kids some Asian-American cultural context in print.

I am completely charmed by the care Lin shows in her pursuits – from writing her blog to planning events for readers – and the childlike delight she takes in sharing them. There is an exquisite delicacy to the way she's able to promote her work without seeming to be doing it at all. The doll, for instance, is called a Pocket Pacy. Lin hopes that Pocket Pacy owners will take a picture of Pacy on their travels, and perhaps leave Pacy behind for someone else to find and travel with.

Two evenings after the book launch, it was Chinese New Year's Day. My kids were expecting and pretending to see the teeny Pocket Pacys on our dark walk home under the twinkling lights of the Commonwealth Avenue Mall. I had showed them pictures of Grace leaving Pocket Pacys in various places on her trip to France. She inspired such a fun and imaginative game, though I don't know if we'd be unselfish enough to actually leave the doll somewhere on purpose. 

"Grace" is actually a perfect name for this woman, who, though seemingly leading a lighthearted, charmed life, has come through the sorrow of losing her first husband, Robert Mercer, to bone cancer in 2007. In 2004 they began a fundraising effort for the Dana Farber Cancer Institute using a book she wrote after his diagnosis, "Robert's Snow," as inspiration. They recruited artist friends to decorate wooden snowflakes for auctions, made another book around those snowflakes (both books are out of print), and raised more than $200,000 for research. I remember one year when we saw the snowflakes displayed at the Eric Carle Museum in Amherst, MA. 

Lin has new books in the works, but we all know what happens when a new life arrives. Her art will be enriched by experiences as a mom, but as we've been warned, goodie bag days may be over. Although love from the heart can spread far, you really do need two hands to bake cupcakes. Grace Lin can take the love and energy and creativity she's been giving to readers and bestow much of it on one lucky recipient. Goodie bags or no, we readers will relish her books, for books' sake.

Congratulations, Grace, on your new print baby, and best wishes to you and husband Alex while you wait for the lucky rain dragon.