 Alright, hi everyone. We're going to get started now. My name is Carmen, and I'm a youth service librarian for San Francisco Public Library. Before we begin, I would like to acknowledge that I am in San Francisco, California on an unceded man of the Roma Tos Aloni people. We are so happy you are here with us to celebrate Asian American Pacific Islander Heritage Month for youth and families with a very special off the program with Christine Mayang. Before we begin, let me share a bit about her. Kristen is a Chinese American author who immigrated from Vietnam, and she has three other new books coming out soon. She is also the author of the picture book, Ginger and Chris Anthony. It's about two cousins with different personalities celebrating their grandmother's birthday. We are also so lucky to have Kristen feature in our hook on a book video, which you can check out at the SFPL channel on YouTube. This special author program is part of our AAPI program series in which we celebrate Asian and Pacific Islander history, culture and heritage. A celebration that we believe should take place not only during May, but all year round. Thank you for joining us to continue understanding, respecting and celebrating the diverse Asian and Pacific Islander history and culture from San Francisco and beyond. Check out the AAPI webpage of San Francisco Public Library to see our upcoming events, find great books by AAPI authors and illustrators and more. If you have any questions, feel free to use the Q&A on Zoom. And if you're watching on YouTube, feel free to put your questions in the chat. And before we start, a huge thanks to the friends of SFPL for their generous support of this special series. We couldn't do this without them. And now without further ado, I present you with Kristen Mayang. Hey everybody, how are you? Thank you so much for joining me for a reading of my debut picture book, Ginger and Chris Sanfam. I'm so excited to read to you today and to celebrate Asian American Pacific Islander Heritage Month. Are you all ready to get started? I'm going to try to make this very interactive to make it fun for you. I might ask you questions. I might ask you to raise your hand, show me fingers. You can even shout out at the screen anytime you want. I want this to be as fun for you as it is for me. Are you ready to get started? The first thing I'm going to do is I'm going to share my screen so that you can see the book really big on your screen. So here we go. Give me just a second. All right, Ginger and Chris Sanfam written by Kristen Mayang. That's me. And illustrated by Shirley Chan. You can see her picture right here. Let's meet the characters. Over on the right here in the orange shirt is Ginger. What's that funny thing on her face? Is that a little heart sticker? Oh, that's so cute. Over here in the purple shirt is Chris Sanfam. And in between them, that's Grandma. Who has Grandma here? I love Grandma. All right, let's go ahead and get started. Ginger and Chris Sanfam are cousins. They're as close as two beans in a pod. But that doesn't mean they always get along. Who here has a cousin? Raise your hand. I have literally dozens of cousins. And Chris Sanfam are so excited. It's Grandma's birthday. And her two little soybeans wanted to be perfect. I made a checklist for the party, Ginger. First we have to dress up. Ginger has no idea what to wear. You can see her on the left over here. She tries every color, shimmer and stripe in her closet. Chris Sanfam over here in the blue knows exactly what to wear. She puts on her favorite dress. She packed the night before, then picks two matching headbands, two beans in a pod. You can see right from the beginning that their styles are very different. Ginger's a little bit messy and very colorful, whereas Chris Sanfam over here is very neat and likes to plant everything she does. Who here can be a little bit messy? I can be a little bit messy sometimes. Chris Sanfam checks her list. Look at this long to-do list she wrote. We still have to shop and decorate. Tonight the whole family will celebrate at Grandma's restaurant where the girls love to help out surrounded by noodles and soups and dim sum and sweet buns. Who here likes dim sum? Me. There's so much to do Ginger cries. Let's go. You can see her grabbing Chris Sanfam's hand over here on the right. She's always in a hurry that Ginger. Chris Sanfam love the crowded aisles and booths of the market. Look at all the fun stuff they're shopping for. Lanterns. Ginger quickly picks paper lanterns in every color. Grandma loves flowers. Chris Sanfam reads all the signs. Meanwhile, Ginger balances the lanterns on her head. What's this lantern here? What kind of animal is that? Go ahead and shout it out. That's right. It's a panda bear. Chris Sanfam decides at last. Ginger and Chris Sanfam flowers. Like us. Together they choose a jade circle for Grandma's present. I pick a jade pendant. I'm sorry. You can see their little reflections right here. Who here has seen real jade before? Raise your hand. I wear my jade every single day. Two beans in a pod. You can see them buying their presents over here. Grandma will be so excited. At Grandma's new Asian kitchen, Ginger loves the steamy dumpling counter where she pounds dough with a bang bang bang. Chris Sanfam prefers the burbling tea station where she neatly packs leaves for calming tea. Who here likes to help out in the kitchen? I love helping out in the kitchen and I'm always cooking in the kitchen with my daughter too. But you can see that even their cooking styles are very different. But today they're decorating. Ginger swirls in clatters, hanging lanterns, helter, skelter. Chris Sanfam places one ginger and one Chris Sanfam blossom at each table and in their headbands. You can see their decorating styles are a little bit different too, aren't they? Everything is going perfectly when Grandma gives them a special assignment. Who wants to make birthday cake? I'll make an amazing cake with blazing candles, Ginger shouts. I'll make a cake light and cool at the cloud, Chris Sanfam declares. So you can see their ideas about baking the cake are different too. Well, why don't you work together, my little soybeans? Ask Grandma. Here's my recipe for green tea cake. Two beans in a pod. How hard can it be? We'll find out. Chris Sanfam makes a checklist of what to do. Step one, step two. Bang, bang, bang. Ginger grabs bowls, spoons, and pans. Chris Sanfam covers her ears. Ginger, you're too loud. Another list? Ginger can't believe it. Chris Sanfam takes a deep breath and arranges her measuring cups. She's missing a cup. That's my biggest. Too biggest. Bang, bang, bang. Ginger splashes, flowers, sugar, and eggs everywhere. Chris Sanfam covers her cups. Ginger, you're too messy. I'm practically done, Ginger Huff's. Santa girl is getting along. What do you think that means when you steam like a teapot? Maybe she's getting a little upset. She reaches for the green tea powder. Bang, bang, bang. Ginger grabs the green tea powder and dumps it all in. Ginger, chrysanthemum shrieks. You're not following the recipe. A recipe is just a fancy list, ginger grumbles. Suddenly, ginger spoon splats. Cool as a winter melon, chrysanthemum snatches that spoon and flicks it back. You're too fast. Now we have to start over. Hot as a chili pepper, ginger roars. You're too slow. Are the girls getting along? I don't think so. You can tell their styles are really different, right? Ginger and chrysanthemum, look at the mess. Look at their sad faces, two beans in a pickle. I need a break. Ginger gets her favorite ice cream, ginger. I need tea. Chrysanthemum gets her favorite tea, chrysanthemum. The party is ruined, chrysanthemum slumps. There's no cake. We'll make another one, ginger shrugs. But you used all the green tea, chrysanthemum size. Sometimes slowing down in the beginning is faster in the end. You sound like a fortune cookie, ginger says. And Chinese people don't even write those. But she does feel bad. Ginger thinks quickly, can we use chrysanthemum tea? Chrysanthemum's eyes light up and ginger ice cream for the icing. A ginger and chrysanthemum cake. The girls giggle sharing tea and ice cream, two beans in a pod. Look how happy they are now. They came up with a solution and it includes ice cream. Who likes ice cream here? I love ice cream. With happy bellies, the cousins get cooking. Ginger cleans the mess, bing, bing, boom. Chrysanthemum carefully measures the ingredients. Ginger mixes, can you help me mix the cake? Come on, help them mix the cake. Chrysanthemum pours, pour, pour, pour, pour. They both lick the spoon. Yum. And here they are at grandma's new Asian kitchen. Look at all the people who showed up for grandma's party. And here are ginger and chrysanthemum leading grandma over. While the cake looks a little lopsided, the color slightly strange. Grandma takes the first bite. Ginger and chrysanthemum hold hands and their breath. Look at their little faces. They look so nervous. Will she like it? What do you think? She loves it. You've made a new recipe together. Well, I've never tasted anything like it. The whole family laughs and cheers. Ginger and chrysanthemum give grandma her presents. And she gives them a big hug. Thank you, my little soy beans. The party is a hit. Ginger and chrysanthemum share a slice of their strange lopsided cake. Warm cake, cool icing, perfect together. Like two beans in a pod. Look at how happy everybody looks, especially grandma. The end. Thank you, everybody, for listening. Now, I would love to share the top five questions that people ask me as an author, a little Q&A. And after I go through these questions, you have an opportunity to ask questions as well. In fact, you can enter them into the chat now and your questions will be read out loud and we'll try to get to as many of them as we can. So here are the top five questions I always get. One, what inspired you to write Ginger and chrysanthemum? Well, of course, cousins. This is my daughter, Kylie, and her cousin, Chloe, and her two other cousins, Bryn and Luna. You can see they have my book right there. Also, Asian American culture. You could see that in the book it was really important to me to represent a modern Asian American experience because that's how I grew up. So the food they ate, the setting, grandma's new Asian restaurant, the presents that they picked, the decorations, it all represents how I grew up in my culture. But the story is really just of two kids who are working out their differences. And I think that's a story that all kids and even grown-ups could really relate to. The next question I get is, well, what do you do when you argue with someone you love? A lot of kids ask me, why did Ginger and chrysanthemum fight so much? Well, they were really different. And I have a question for you, which is, is it okay to be different? Raise your hand if you think it's okay to be different. Of course it is. Everybody has a different opinion. And it's so important that we respect each other's opinions and our differences. That's actually what makes us all really cool, right? So what did you do? Well, in the book, the girls took a break. Sometimes when you have a disagreement, you need to just step back a little bit and give yourself a moment to calm down. And then maybe you can listen to each other and you can brainstorm a solution together just like the girls did. And then you stick to it and you move on. Hopefully you can think about that or maybe you can think about that the next time you get into an argument with someone you love. The next question I get is, do you do your own drawings, your own illustrations? I don't. We have an amazing illustrator. Her name is Shirley Chan. She's so talented. But one of my favorite parts of being the author is that I love to see the pictures come to life. I get to see them in progress. Would you like to see a picture before it became final? Something in progress? You might recognize this spread from the book of the girls getting dressed up. Well, before it looked like this, it looked like this. So this is called a sketch. It's drawn in black and white. And guess what? The whole book is done that way so that we can all take a look at it, make sure that we don't need to make too many changes before it's finalized in full color. So here's another look at a sketch and the final illustration. I love seeing that come to life. The next question I get is, what was your favorite part to write? Well, of course, the food fight. It's fun, it's funny, it's active. Who out there has gotten into a food fight? Hopefully not too many, but I've maybe gotten into one or two myself. What I like about this scene is that every story, every good story has great characters, a problem and a solution. And in the food fight scene, you got to see what the problem was based on the characters, how different they are. That's what the problem was. They had a hard time working together. And then ultimately the solution when they brainstormed a new recipe together. Plus food fights are always fun. Finally, people always ask me, where do you get your ideas? What is your writing process? Well, the first thing, and I'm sure your parents, maybe your teachers and librarians have told you that you need to read a lot. This is a picture of just a couple of my bookshelves. I read every single day. I love to read. It's really something that's changed my life. And without reading, I couldn't write. The next thing I do is I write down all of my ideas. You can see, I have a little picture of a notebook here where I write down all of my ideas. I have stacks of notebooks, but you don't have to write them down. Maybe you're just learning to write now. You can also speak your ideas. You can talk into a recorder, you can record a little video, or you can even tell your parents, your family members, your teachers, your librarians. I'm sure they would love to hear all your ideas. And I write every day. I'm not sure how well you can see this, but this is my little dog. Her name is Yuzu. She either is on my desk or on my lap, and we write together every day so that we can practice and get better. And finally, to come up with ideas, I ask one little question that maybe you can ask too. I ask, what if? What if I could have any pet I wanted? Well, that's a story. What kind of pet would you come up with? Would it be a unicorn? Would it be an apotheop? Would it be a raccoon? What kind of pet would that be? You could write it any way you want. What if I had to fight a dragon? What would that be like? So maybe tomorrow you can come up with three what if questions, and those would be three ideas that you could write. Thank you so much for listening. I'm going to switch it back over now so that we could see what kind of questions you've, what kind of questions you've entered. I'm gonna stop sharing my screen. All right, thank you, Kristen, for that wonderful presentation. All right, so we have some questions from YouTube and the Q&A. So one question from YouTube is how do you get the book published? Oh, how do I get the book published? Well, that's a very long process, or at least it was for me. It might not be for everybody, but I spent a lot of time writing this book. If you had to guess how many years it took me to go from writing this book to getting it published, what would you guess? Would it be one year, five years, 10 years? It was almost 10 years. But in that time, I was learning how to write. I was taking classes. I was revising, sending it out to people to get them to give me feedback. And I would listen to that feedback and I would do something called revising. I would rewrite and make it better over and over again. And then from there, I submitted it to a bunch of agents. Guess what? I got rejected a lot. A lot of agents said no, but I didn't quit. I kept trying. I kept going to conferences. I kept improving my writing. I kept practicing. I wrote other books along the way. And then finally, I found an agent. The agent submitted it to a bunch of editors. And guess what? I got rejected a lot again. And I continued writing and making it better. And then one day, my wonderful editor, Arthur Levine, bought the book. And now I have three other books under contract. So it was a long journey, but it was well worth it. Wow, 10 years is a long time. Here's a question from McQ&A. Did you like to write stories when you were in school? I did. I loved writing stories. From when I was a really little girl, I don't know if my family knows this, but I used to even write little stories about them all the time. I just loved it. I read and I wrote. These were my two hobbies and passions that I really enjoyed. And then I kind of went away from it for a long time. For a long time, I thought, well, I couldn't possibly make money writing books. That seems crazy. And so I went to college. I have a job, actually, in interactive kids' media. And I still work in interactive kids' media. I love my job. But there was always something inside of me that thought, I wish I could write my own stories and create my own characters. And so one day, I started writing again. And here we are. But yes, it started from when I was very little. I never gave up on wanting to do that, even if I did go through many things before I got back to it. All right, here's another question. What's your favorite book? Oh my gosh, I get this question a lot. I should be so much more prepared for this than I am. There are so many wonderful books out there. Gosh, from a picture book perspective, there's a classic I really like that you probably know. It's called How the Grinch Stole Christmas, which I think is one of the best picture books ever written. I wish I had a stack of books to show you. Recently, there's a book by Andrea Wang called Watercrest. She also wrote Magic Ramen. That's really great. I'm looking around. There's a chapter book series called Alvin Ho that I love. There are just so many. But I hope that answers the question. And here's another question from YouTube. Who was the first person or few people that you shared a final book with when it was published? Who was the... I'm sorry, say that again. Who was the first person or the first few people that you shared a final book with when it was first published? When it was first published. I guess that would have to be my family. I sent copies of the book to my... When I said I have dozens of cousins, I really do. I am one of six kids. And so I made sure that my family had... Actually, they're so nice. They supported me. They went out and bought my book. But in terms of showing it, it was my family. And then also, I work with a wonderful critique group. I highly recommend this for anybody who wants to write to have people who will read your book and give you feedback. So that could be family members, friends, teachers, because it's so important to see how other people read your book or your writing so that you can get better. I'm part of a fabulous group who has been working with me for almost the whole decade on these books and they read my stories. And so they were some of the few that I shared as well. That's great that they were very supportive. Here's another question. What inspired you to become an author? Reading, reading a lot. When I was little, I didn't have a lot of money. So I couldn't buy my own books. I went to the library every single week. So this was like my family trip that we loved so much. Every week we would all go to the library. And I'm not just saying this because this is San Francisco Public Library that this presentation is for. We would go to the library every week and I would load up. I was such a reader. I would have a stack of books and I would check that out every single week. And at the end of the week, the next weekend, we'd go back and I'd turn those all in and get another stack of books. And that's really what inspired me. I mean, books changed my life. There are ways to experience other characters, cultures, worlds to see things that you might not get a chance to see. And also a chance to maybe read that somebody else is going through an experience similar to yours. Whether it's in the way that they're growing up or a problem that they're having to face that maybe you have as well. It was so comforting for me to read those stories. And that's what inspired me to also want to write. And we have a question from Fiona. Have any of your stories been translated into Korean? I don't think so. I'm a debut author. So this book, Ginger and Chrysanthemum, just came out in October. And, but you know, I really don't have the answer to that. I'll have to look into that. I would have to ask my publisher. Oh, I guess I'm also wondering, has it been translated to any other languages yet? I wish, I don't think so. But you know, I really need to find the answer to that question. Maybe I could do a follow-up on that. And here's another question. What's your favorite animal? Well, I have two dogs. So I think they'd be mad at me if I didn't say dogs. But secretly, I think Panda might be up there as well. Don't tell my dogs. And here's another question. How important is it to edit and revise your story before you publish a book? It is the most important part. There's a saying that is that writing is rewriting. So the first part of writing a book, coming up with the idea, getting all of those ideas on paper, it's so fun. It can also be hard because you want, when you're first start writing, maybe to make it perfect. Think, oh, you know, I wanna make this perfect, writing is hard. Well, guess what? Every book, anything that gets published is revised and rewritten and edited so many times before it gets published. Not only is this important to make it better and better, but also to me, it's actually very comforting. And I hope it would make it comforting for you too. You don't have to think, oh gosh, the first time I write something, it has to be perfect. It doesn't, it never is. So in a way, if you know, there are going to be many phases of editing, revising, rewriting even, it frees you up in that beginning part to just be creative, to put it all down there. Don't worry if it's too long or if it's too short or you didn't say it the right way. That's what editing and revising are for. And give just know that you'll have that chance to do that afterward. It might actually make writing easier for you, knowing that, not harder. That's very good advice. So how do you come up with the names? Oh, the names. Okay, so for these names, it's different with different books that I write, but I often like for the names to have some kind of meaning beyond just the name itself. And for Ginger and Chrysanthemum, as I mentioned, I was inspired by watching my daughter and her cousin. They're not quite as opposite as these characters were. I really exaggerated that to make the problem kind of more fun. And then beyond that, because one is hot and one is cold, one is fast, one is slow, I thought it'd be really interesting and fun to represent their names as hot and cold as well. And there's a traditional Chinese belief that there are foods that are warming or cooling. So when I was growing up, if I ever had a cold, my mom would give me ginger or ginger soup. And if I ever had a fever, I would get Chrysanthemum tea because that's considered cooling. Chili peppers are considered warming, winter melon is considered cooling. So I thought it would be fun to name Ginger, which is a hot food based on her personality and Chrysanthemum after a cool food like Chrysanthemum to show kind of that hot and cold yin and yang dynamic between the two of them. And are you in the process of writing a book right now? Yes, I am always in the process of writing a book just because I love it. I really do. I usually have multiple projects happening at any given time. Sometimes with some books, I'm in the initial writing, getting all the ideas down, figuring out. And then with a different book, I might be in the revising phase so that I can kind of use my brain different ways and kind of switch back and forth. So I'm working on a few different projects right now. I'm gonna piggyback on that question. Do you have anything to say about your upcoming books? Oh, sorry. Or like what are they? Oh yes, absolutely. So next year I have a book coming out called The Rise and Falls of Jackie Chan. It is a picture book, the nonfiction picture book biography of Jackie Chan. So I grew up watching his movies and one day I found out that he actually was trained in Chinese opera, in Beijing opera when he was a child. And it kind of just intrigued me so much to find out that there was so much more to him than I knew and that maybe other people knew. And so hopefully they'll learn much more about Jackie Chan and what a multi-dimensional character he is beyond that funny action star that you've seen so many times. Then after that, the year after that, I have another book called Last Flight and it's about my family's own journey when we left Vietnam. I found out really pretty recently that we were on this very dramatic flight. It was the last commercial flight out of Vietnam, out of Saigon six days before it's fall. And I never even knew this. And so it's a story of how many people came together to really make this happen for my family. Then after that, I have one more book under contract but I can't announce it yet because it hasn't been announced. But thank you for asking. Well, we definitely need to go and eat those upcoming coffee sins. And for the Jackie Chan one, I knew he could sing because he sang for Mulan before but I didn't know he knew Chinese opera so that's very surprising. Yes, he trained in that. That was his first training in performing arts as a child. It's a really fascinating story. At least it was for me. And so I was really excited to learn more about him to write it. Now I've watched those movies with my children and they love them. So we're all Jackie Chan fans. And here's a question from Yuka Ko. Yuka Ko, I hope I'm saying it right. What is your favorite color? Oh, my favorite color? I think yellow. It's so bright and colorful and happy. All right, another question. What do you think of this book? I think they're referring to Ginger and Chrysanthemum. What do you think of it? Well, you know, I love it, of course, because I wrote it, but I will tell you, I mean, I think any writer goes through this. I think you go through kind of ups and downs with even your own book, right? So you'll write something and at first you love it. You think, oh my gosh, it's so good. I can't believe I wrote this. And then you might step away and you think, oh, it's terrible, nobody's going to like it. What have I done? And so you kind of go through these emotional up and downs with anything you spend so much time creating. But I'm happy to report. I've come back around. I love it. Not only love it because I wrote it, but the arts, the care that the editor, the publisher took with creating this book. It's just gorgeous. Paper is just feeling it. I'm really sad that my book came out during the pandemic because I feel like that's so much part of the shopping experience. Like you can't really tell, but the paper's beautiful. The names are shiny on here. The illustrations by Shirley Chan are just so beautiful. And they really captured some things that I never even really said or put in my text that were surprising and wonderful to me. One thing that the illustrator and my editor did is they really made this because they knew it was important to me, a modern Asian-American experience. I wanted girls today, boys today, to be able to relate to these girls, not only see themselves, but maybe even see a little peek at some culture that maybe they're not as familiar with. And I wanted to really get to this one scene because I love it so much. This scene where they get to Grandma's new Asian kitchen, I really didn't have this as you can see, a wordless spread. So none of my words are here. But she shows such a diversity of culture and people in this spread that I love so much. And I really never said anything about that. So when I got to see this, I just thought, this is amazing. This looks like a restaurant I might go to where so many different people are enjoying themselves. And that is true for the next scene as well, where you can see all different types of people all together. And I really love that about this book. So that was a great question. Thank you for letting me share some of my favorite parts. And how old when you first started? Like when you first started writing? I don't even really remember. I think as soon as I could write, I started writing. But those were just little snippets, little stories, mostly copying things that maybe I had read in books. I went ahead and wrote something very similar myself. One thing that I think is really funny is when I was pretty young, I think like I was in sixth grade or something like that, I decided to write a novel and it was going to be about college roommates. Except I don't know why I thought at 12 years old, I should write about college roommates. But since they don't live in a room, they live in a dorm. It would be called dormies. And I thought this was very genius. But of course, I only wrote one page because I have no idea what it is to be a college age person. So at that time. All right. And we're going to wrap this up with one more question. The question is how hard was it? I think they're going to, I think they're referring to, like how hard was it to getting a book published and writing and a process of writing it? Um, yeah, I mean, I just mentioned it's taken many, many years to get here. But, you know, it's, it's, um, it's really rewarding. Um, I would say concentrate less on how hard it might be or how long it might take and really just be patient with yourself. I know I was really in a hurry a lot of times. I just wanted to get my book written and get it published. And I was just desperate to get that happen. But at the end of the day, when my book was published, the most important thing to me, honestly, was that it was a good book and I honestly did have some anxiety some days thinking, is it a good book? Did I write a good book? When kids read it, are they going to like it? And so I'm actually glad it took a long time because I think it's a better book now than it would have been when I first wrote it. And I always want to have the best book that I possibly could have written out there versus the fastest book that I could have gotten out there. So, yes, it was hard. It's rewarding. Don't give up if you want to write, keep reading, keep writing. It is a reward in itself. And then you might not be able to imagine what else might happen. And you never will get published unless you keep trying, keep writing, keep getting it out there, keep showing your work to other people. All right. Thank you so much. So that'd be the end of our Q&A. We'll move on to closing announcements. Thank you so much for an amazing talk. Christian, do you have any words of farewell to our audience? Just that I'm so grateful for your time in listening to me. There are so many books out there. This represents me in a big way, you know, what I believe in my culture. And the fact that you took some time to listen to it is just really important to me and really special. Thank you so much. All right. Thank you again, Christian, for coming today and sharing with us. All right. And I also want to thank you all for joining us today. If you love today's program, check out our calendar for future virtual AAPI programs. Next week, we'll invite you to join us for a very special program with Elizabeth Yang, founder of Hong Woman, Take On The World, and that's it for today, folks. Take good care of yourselves, stay safe, and we hope to see you at another library program soon.