The Favorite Daughter

Another great story from Allen Say. Love the picture of his daughter at the end -

Japanese culture, Wants to go to Japan with Dad but she has to do assignments appreciating the Japanese culure.
Bridhing cultural gap.

2

I did not like The Favorite Daughter for a few reasons. One, I think the concept was hard to grasp, and two, the story did not have much of a plot of a flow. The language seemed to be very choppy and confusing.

The idea that a child wants to change their name because it does not “fit” with the

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rest of their friend is very common. Especially for students who have Japanese of Chinese names. They use her original name and her new name interchangeably too many times. I had to reread the first few pages a few times before I understood what was going on. The story starts out with an interesting concept of changing the name, but then the excitement dwindles away. The next few pages are just filled with a random, uneventful, boring plot.

There were some sentences in the book that did not flow together and seemed very choppy. These were sentences that I had to read a few times to really know what they were trying to say.

This story shows a little of the culture that her and her father are from, but not enough to catch the reader’s attention. Getting through the book was tough for me, so I can’t imagine an elementary school child trying to read this book.

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This book was a beautiful book about a father and a daughter. The book starts with the daughter asking for a baby picture to take to class. She chooses one from when she was little and she was wearing a Kimono that her father brought back from Japan. The kids end up making fun of the little girl

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for her name and the Kimono and the art teacher mispronounces her Japanese name. Yuriko decides she wants to change her name to an american name and stops enjoying art. Yuriko does not like school any more and doesn't want to do an art project she has been assigned on the golden gate bridge. Yuriko's father takes her through the Japanese gardens and helps Yuriko discover that the things that make her unique are good. In the end Yuriko finds a way to make her art project unique and discovers to love who she is.

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This is about a girl named Yuriko who hates her name. She s half Japanese and the kids teasing makes her want to hide. She escapes the teasing by doing art projects.She has a patient, kind father who reminds her of their traditions. This is a sweet story.

When Yuriko's new art teacher mispronounces her name, and her classmates insist, after seeing a baby picture of her in a kimono, that Japanese dolls (?) must have black hair, the young girl is cast down. Insisting that she must have an 'American' name, she decides that she will henceforth be known

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as Michelle. Her wise father allows her the chance to work through this crisis of identity, reminding her in gentle ways - dinner at her favorite sushi restaurant, a trip to the Japanese gardens in Golden Gate Park in San Francisco - of her Japanese heritage. When she eventually completes her art assignment - a depiction of the Golden Gate Bridge - it is as Yuriko, not Michelle, that she takes credit.

I am a great fan of the marvelously talented Allen Say, and have loved so many of his picture-books, from the Caldecott Medal-winning Grandfather's Journey to my personal favorite, Kamishibai Man. Many of his books are autobiographical in nature, drawing upon his own story, and the stories of his family members. The Favorite Daughter is based on the experiences of his daughter Yuriko, a biracial child with Japanese and European ancestry. I enjoyed the story, and appreciated both its depiction of a loving father-daughter relationship, and the window it opened into the world of a mixed-race child who encounters insensitivity at school. That said, I cannot say it quite lived up to some of Say's other books. The artwork, created using watercolor, pen and ink, pencil, and two photographs (of the real-life Yuriko), was colorful and appealing, but it didn't have that luminous quality I have come to associate with Say's work. Still, when not being judged against the immensely high standard of its creator's other work, this was an appealing book, and I would recommend it to anyone looking for children's stories about biracial and/or bicultural children and their families.

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Allen Say just warms my heart. Loved this story about a dad working with his daughter as she grapples with who she is, at such a young age. Just lovely.