As Xiao Ming plays in the park on a bright spring day, his mother teaches him ten Chinese characters, based on some of the things they see or experience in the park: earth, insects, bird, chirping, tree, twig, etc. For each character, Xiao Ming's mother points out aspects that reflect the object in reality (strokes that resemble the feathers on a bird, for instance); this is further reinforced with stylized drawings beside the actual characters they resemble in the glossary that appears on the books' endpapers. As with her two previous books featuring Xiao Ming learning Chinese characters, At the Beach (Holt, 1994) and In the Snow (Holt, 1995), Lee uses colorful cut-paper collages to illustrate the story. (Ages 6-9)

Spring has arrived and Xiao Ming can't wait to spend the day in the park with his mother. All around them are signs of the season: insects flying, leaves on the trees, and flowers in bloom. Xiao Ming's mother teaches Xiao Ming how to write the words for these things in Chinese by first drawing pictures of them.

Following the highly acclaimed At the Beach and In the Snow, In the Park is Huy Voun Lee's third book on Chinese character writing. The instructional text, written as a simple story, is complemented by exuberant, cut-paper art. And the steps to writing the ten Chinese characters taught in the story are reinforced on the endpapers. After a day in the park with Xiao Ming and his mother, young readers will be eager to try their own hand at drawing Chinese characters.