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The Chinese New Year creeps in on little rat feet. On February 19, by Western reckoning, the Year of the Rat starts.
The rat is the first creature in the Chinese zodiac, and thereby hangs a tale. Among the heavenly dozen there are far likelier contenders: the lofty dragon (awesome, rather than horrific, in Chinese culture), the breathtaking tiger, even the noble horse. So how did such a lowly animal attain such celestial standing?
Ed Young, born and raised in China, has an answer in Cat and Rat: The Legend of the Chinese Zodiac (Henry Holt, $15.95, 0-8050-2977-X). The Jade Emperor, ruler of the heavens, proposes a race. The prize: a year named for each of 12 finalists. Cat and rat, inseparable friends, decide to collaborate, but crafty rat outsmarts cat, leaving the hapless feline out of the running. Thus arose the order of the zodiac cycle‹and an ancient animosity.
Young's telling of the tale is spare, his art anything but. Dark and seething with half-hidden action, the illustrations bring an appropriate aura of mystery to the unadorned text.
Such legends, and more earthy folk tales, have long proved abundant sources for picture books with Chinese themes. Another new book by Young, Night Visitors (Philomel, $15.95, ages 4-8, 0-399-22731-8), follows not a starry legend, but an old tale with its nose close to the ground.
It happened that the storehouse of a certain merchant was besieged by ants. He proposes flooding the pests, but his kindhearted son seeks a more peaceful way. In a dream, the son is guided to a shining ant kingdom. Granted a vision of the value of even the humblest lives, he's able to avert ant annihilation. In keeping with the story's restrained and respectful mood, the illustrations display a modest, muted charm imbued with ocher.
Young has been able to cast new light on Chinese tales that are also strangely familiar. His Lon Po Po: A Red-Riding Hood Story from China (Philomel/Putnam & Grosset, $15.95)‹1990 Caldecott winner‹shifted the cast, but kept the tenor of this time-worn tale.
He's also illustrated Yeh-Shen: A Cinderella Story from China by Ai-ling Louie (Putnam & Grosset, $5.95), The Emperor and the Kite by Jane Yolen (Putnam & Grosset, $5.95), among many others.
In The Ch'i-lin Purse: A Collection of Ancient Chinese Stories (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, $16, 0-374-31241-9), storyteller Linda Fang raids the treasury of Chinese lore to polish and display anew nine classics. Here clever officials solve problems with benign wit, restore harmony with wise words. Fang has a good feel for what an audience (of older children) can follow. Only one story becomes too tangled in titles and names; the rest are rewardingly lucid. Jeanne M. Lee's drawings gracefully complement them all.
Speaking of voluble storytellers, the happily ubiquitous Laurence Yep turns out young adult novels and picture book texts with a wondrous vigor. Born and raised in San Francisco (though not its Chinatown), Yep first wrote science fiction but soon switched to a Chinese-American focus.
He's retold Chinese tales (those brought by immigrants) in The Rainbow People (HarperCollins, $3.95 paper, $16, cloth, ages 8-12) and Tongues of Jade (HarperCollins, $14.95, 8-12), both illustrated by David Wiesner.
One of his newest picture books, The City of Dragons (Scholastic, $14.95, 0-590-47865-6) illustrated by Jean and Mou-sien Tseng, spins, amid supernatural trimmings, a familiar fable of our times: the child with an undiscovered talent. The hero's a sad-faced lad who involuntarily makes grown men weep and dragons shed pearly ears. This tale of camel-driving giants, a magnificent underwater city, and the curious commerce between them is mightily entertaining.
Yep's Tiger Woman (BridgeWater Books/Troll, $15.95, 0-8617-3464-X), based on a Shantung folk song and illustrated by Robert Roth, tells a rollicking tale of greed, gluttony, and transformation. The title character's reluctance to share puts her through alarming changes until, almost ending up on a platter, she reforms. All the while, characters break into song at the most delightfully inopportune moments. Roth's gleefully surreal illustrations, full of zesty wit, perfectly suit the menu.
Other recent picture books by the indefatigable Yep include The Man Who Tricked a Ghost (BridgeWater/Troll, $4.95 paper, $15.95 cloth), illustrated by Isadore Seltzer; and The Junior Thunder Lord (BridgeWater/Troll, $15.95), with Robert Van Nutt's bright, riotous pictures.
©1996, ProMotion, inc.