Her book is breezy, yet it takes a while to get its momentum. Every kid in middle school wonders: Am I weird, or is it everyone else? Are you the Martian or am I? Lai does a very effective job of putting us in the mind of a middle-schooler. Lai also wonderfully captures the awkward experience of being a new kid at a new school. But the book doesn't just speak to those of us who are a step or two away from the immigrant experience. My own recent family tree is filled with immigrants, people who hit the language barrier hard and had to find ways to get their voices back, and 'Pie in the Sky' is aimed straight at my heart. But the brothers must keep their baking a secret from their mother, who has prohibited them from using the oven while she is at work. In order to combat his loneliness and remember his father, he decides to bake every cake from his father's Pie in the Sky menu with the equally cake-obsessed Yanghao.

Friendless and isolated from his classmates by a lack of English, Jingwen turns to the familiar: baking. Their mother works long hours as an employee at a neighborhood bakery, and the boys are largely unsupervised. It's so different from his old home, and he can't understand what the Martians - cleverly drawn by Lai as, yes, Martians - are saying. As far as Jingwen is concerned, Australia might as well be Mars. But when his father suddenly dies, Jingwen, his annoying little brother, Yanghao, and their mother have to make the move without Dad. The new menu will be his father's attempt to bridge the anticipated cultural divide and conquer the hearts and tastes of their new compatriots. It will be called the Pie in the Sky bakery and will feature flashy offerings like Nutella cream cake and rainbow cake. In his old country, Jingwen's family owns a bakery featuring local treats like sesame balls and 'steamed prosperity cupcakes.' In anticipation of emigrating to Australia, Jingwen's father creates a new menu for the bakery he dreams of opening. Lai also did the excellent artwork - this is a highly illustrated (though not graphic) novel. Jingwen is the protagonist of pie in the SKY (Holt, 384 pp' $21.99 ages 8 to 11), Remy Lai's heartfelt, funny and, of course, sweet debut middle-grade novel. And Jingwen believes that if he bakes enough, cake will become a connection to his late father. Cake is his voice when the language barrier silences him in his new home. For many of us, it's just a dessert, but for 11-year-old Jingwen, cake is a connection to the culture he left behind in his old country. For 11-year-old Jingwen, baking is the only solution.

Pie in the sky by remy lai 1 times