Bing’s Cherries

A Chinese immigrant to the U.S., whose name graces a popular cherry, is imagined in folkloric terms across this inventive picture book by Blackburne and Kuo. On summer afternoons, this book’s unnamed young narrator climbs with their dad to pick cherries, and Daddy invariably mentions Ah Bing, a mythical figure who’s “Chinese like us.” At night, drawing from scant details, the child imagines Ah Bing as a man so tall “he needed two boats to carry him” from China to San Francisco. In Oregon, he’s hired to work at an orchard, where his rich singing voice encourages trees to grow taller “just so they could listen.” Combined with anecdotal-feeling narration, crisp digital illustrations that incorporate a limited palette make strong use of pattern and scale. It’s an enchantingly rendered legend poised, per back matter, to sit “on the shelf between the Chinese myths and American folktales.” Creator notes and recipes conclude. Background characters are portrayed with various skin tones. Ages 4–8. (Mar.)