An illustrated middle grade novel about an 11yo and his annoying younger brother's experience immigrating to a new country and coping with grief, through baking. That sounds like a grim description as I'm writing it, but it is really funny and moving at the same time.

Love this -- love the bratty, funny younger brother, the tensions that Jingwen is navigating, the cake project, the graphic novel aspects, the learning english-martian analogy. Well done, super entertaining. ( )

I'm kind of tempted to go back and reread books from my childhood, because I swear I don't remember them doing such a good job of balancing so many issues as some of the ones I've read recently (this one, Stargazing, This Was Our Pact) without distracting or detracting from a great story.

Jingwen is almost twelve and his zany, super-energetic little brother Yanghao is almost ten when they move with their mother to Australia. Jingwen's dad had dreamed of opening a cake shop called Pie in the Sky there--fancier than the one he runs at home--but after he died in a car crash, Jingwen's mother decides to bring the boys herself. She works in a bakery and barely gets a half hour with them between school and work on weekdays, so she trusts Jingwen to get his homework done and corral his brother for dinner and a shower...both of which would be easier said than done even if Jingwen wasn't giving up on ever learning English and instead fixating on recreating all the signature cakes that would have been on the Pie in the Sky menu as a way to keep his father's memory alive.

Despite his mother's strict warning not to cook while she's out, Jingwen and Yanghao sneak to the grocery store, hide supplies under their beds, throw open the windows to air out the scent, and devour whole cakes before she gets back from work. For Yanghao, it's just fun and delicious, but for Jingwen, who (sometimes literally, with Lai's cute illustrations) views either his family or English-speakers as aliens (depending on the circumstances), it becomes a way to hide from how poorly he is doing in school, how much trouble he has making friends, how many lies he’s telling, and how far behind his brother he is at picking up English.

If all that sounds heavy, it is...but it's also very, very funny. Yanghao's antics are great and Jingwen has a kind of offbeat-lite sense of humor. Both characters do seem to speak a few years younger than they are—I can’t imagine a 12-year old calling someone a “booger” rather than a rather nastier word, and Jingwen seems just a little too hyperactive for a 9-year-old (though, admittedly, my sample of my sister and her friends is a little dated at this point)—but Yanghao’s inner dialog reveals a much more mature and complicated inner life of emotions and misinterpretations. We get a literal window into this world with Lai’s illustrations, which are not skippable but instead contribute important pieces of the story, often with word bubbles. Lai conveys Yanghao’s (lack of) understanding of English with cryptic-looking characters surrounding the few English words he knows. ( )

"Two brothers navigate a new country, a new language, and grief through cake.

In this graphic/prose hybrid novel, 12-year-old Jingwen, his little brother, Yanghao, and their mother immigrate to Australia. The family is Chinese, though their home country is never specified. The boys start at the Northbridge Primary School not knowing any English, which has Jingwen feeling they have just arrived on Mars. Quickly he realizes it is he and Yanghao who must appear to be the Martians to everyone else, comically literalized with pictures of a four-eyed, antennae’d Jingwen. While Yanghao quickly picks up English, Jingwen resists, struggling in lessons and to make friends. Piece by piece readers learn it was Jingwen’s father’s dream to open a cake shop called Pie in the Sky in Australia before he suddenly passed away. After finding the family’s cookbook, the boys decide to secretly bake all the Pie in the Sky cakes. Jingwen especially takes it to heart, pouring his grief and frustrations into every frosted layer, believing that it “will fix everything.” Herself an immigrant to Australia from Singapore, Lai unfolds the story like a memory, giving brief flashbacks interspersed throughout the daily musings and nuanced relationships among family members. Jingwen’s emotional journey is grounded in honest reality; it ebbs and flows naturally with strategic spots of humor to lighten the overall tone.

Like salted caramel, a perfect balance of flavors, this deftly drawn story is a heartfelt treat. (Graphic/fiction hybrid. 10-13)" A Kirkus Starred Review, www.kirkusreviews.com