Pie in the Sky

By Remy Lai

A poignant, laugh-out-loud illustrated middle-grade novel about an eleven-year-old boy's immigration experience, his annoying little brother, and their cake-baking hijinks! Perfect for fans of Raina Telgemeier and Gene Luen Yang!

A Parents Magazine Best Kids Book of the Year!
A New York Public Library Best Book of the Year!
An NPR Best Book of the Year!
A Horn Book Best Book of the Year!
A Kirkus Best Book of the Year!
Recipient of FIVE starred reviews!

"Pie in the Sky is like enjoying a decadent cake . . . heartwarming and rib-tickling." —Terri Libenson, bestselling author of Invisible Emmie

When Jingwen moves to a new country, he feels like he’s landed on Mars. School is torture, making friends is impossible since he doesn’t speak English, and he's often stuck looking after his (extremely irritating) little brother, Yanghao.

To distract himself from the loneliness, Jingwen daydreams about making all the cakes on the menu of Pie in the Sky, the bakery his father had planned to open before he unexpectedly passed away. The only problem is his mother has laid down one major rule: the brothers are not to use the oven while she's at work. As Jingwen and Yanghao bake elaborate cakes, they'll have to cook up elaborate excuses to keep the cake making a secret from Mama.

In her hilarious, moving middle-grade debut, Remy Lai delivers a scrumptious combination of vibrant graphic art and pitch-perfect writing that will appeal to fans of Shannon Hale and LeUyen Pham's Real Friends, Kelly Yang's Front Desk, and Jerry Craft's New Kid.

A Junior Library Guild selection!

"Seamlessly mixes together equal parts of humor, loss, identity, discovery, and love to create a delicious concoction of a story. . . illustrated beautifully with Lai's insightful drawings." —Veera Hiranandani, Newbery Honor-winning author of The Night Diary

* "The humor [is] akin to that of Jeff Kinney’s popular “Wimpy Kid” series . . . the perfect mixture of funny and emotionally resonant." —School Library Journal, starred review

* “Perfect for fans of Gene Luen Yang and Victoria Jamieson.” —Shelf Awareness, starred review

This title has common core connections.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Macmillan Publishers
• Release date: May 14, 2019
• ISBN: 9781250208675

Remy Lai

Remy Lai studied fine arts, with a major in painting and drawing. She was born in Indonesia, grew up in Singapore, and currently lives in Brisbane, Australia, where she writes and draws stories for kids with her two dogs by her side. She is the author of the critically-acclaimed Pie in the Sky, Fly on the Wall, Pawcasso, the Surviving the Wild series, Ghost Book, Read at Your Own Risk, and Chickenpox.

Book preview

1

I look. The wing of the airplane slices through the fluffy cloud like a knife through cake. Sometimes, when the plane leans enough, I catch glimpses of the ocean. It’s as blue as the sky. Only the clouds make it clear that the sky is the sky. Then Yanghao sticks his oily face to the window, and my view is replaced by the back of his giant head.

I turn to the box on my lap. It’s pink and looks like a plain old box from a mom-and-pop bakery. The cake inside looks like a plain old cake iced with plain old cream and topped with plain old strawberries. But it’s the most special cake. Not a special of my family’s cake shop back in my old home, because this cake isn’t on the menu. My family usually only has this cake on our birthdays, but my grandmother made an exception. Ah-po handed me the box of cake through the window of the taxi and said, Jingwen, you’ll be so happy over there that you’ll need to celebrate with this cake. Goes to show that old people aren’t wise about everything.

A long time ago, which really isn’t that long ago but seems like from a time when dinosaurs roamed, I asked Ah-po if she and Ah-gong were coming along to Australia. She replied, If we both go, who’ll run our cake shop?

Our cake shop will never ever close, Ah-gong said, even though that day was a Sunday and our shop was closed, like on all Sundays. I asked him what if a giant meteor was hurtling toward Earth, or King Kong was on a rampage, or chickens became extinct so there were no eggs for cake making. He handed me an egg cake and told me to eat it while it was warm. Old people are sly at shutting kids up.

We’re too old and set in our ways, Ah-po said. And that was that. Once old people use age as a reason for anything, a kid can never come up with a reply that’s good enough. But she and Ah-gong truly did look sad that they weren’t coming. I wanted to tell them everything would be all right, but instead, I just split the tiny egg cake in half and watched short ribbons of steam rise out of it.

Ah-gong had the final word. It’s so far away. It’s too long a flight.

Of course, because Ah-gong is old, he is right, and this flight I’m on is definitely too long. Not just because of the thousands-of-kilometers distance.

Hours that seem like centuries later, Yanghao’s still going, Looklooklook! A bathroom on the plane! Looklooklook!

A shadow falls over the cake. I look up. A flight attendant is standing over me.

It’s the first time someone directly speaks to me in English. It sounds like Martian.

Oh wait, I think I caught the word "please." But please what?

Jingwen. Mama puts a hand on my arm. The flight attendant wants to store the cake in the overhead compartment. We’re about to land.

I close the box and hand it to the flight attendant.

Mama says, "Thank you, and I think the flight attendant replies, Welcome," but I’m not sure. The word is lost in some other words.

Suddenly it feels like I’ve been frozen in this sitting position for days. My back is tired, and my knees are sore. I straighten my legs, but my feet knock the seat in front of me. A woman’s face appears in the gap between that seat and the one next to it. She glances down at my feet. I squirm.

The cabin turns dim, and the plane shakes like I’m in my family’s Honda CR-V back home, driving our way along a street that’s more potholes than road. My ears hurt again like they did when the plane took off. I tell myself that everything will be all right, pinch my nose, and blow. Pop! Then the plane lands with a jolt like when our CR-V goes over a speed bump too fast.

Before the seat belt signs are switched off, people get up to retrieve their stuff from the overhead compartments. Mama follows, standing on tiptoes to reach for Yanghao’s and my backpacks and her handbag. She hands me the pink box.

Yanghao climbs over the seat dividers toward me.

I don’t want everyone on the plane to stare when he cries, and Mama will make me be a good older brother anyway, so I pass the box over. Don’t drop it, I say. Then I shout, Don’t run! Don’t be a silly booger! as he skips ahead of Mama and me down the rows of seats.

I’ve forgotten that little brothers only do the opposite, and I should’ve told him to drop the box, run like a wild moose, and act like the biggest booger. I’m stepping off the soft carpet onto the clickety-clackety floor of the rectangular snake that connects the plane to the airport when he says, Ah!

The next thing I hear is a plop!

All I can do is stare at the rainbow cake and let ridiculous thoughts run through my brain. Maybe it’s an omen, that we shouldn’t have stuck with the plan and come to Australia.

I want to yell at Yanghao, kick him when Mama isn’t looking. He’ll tattle, but it’ll be worth it. I also want to join his concert of tears, wails, and snot. But then I hear the people around us—those in front of us who have turned back upon hearing Yanghao’s cries, those passing by us, and those stuck behind us.

I’m on Mars.

2

Two months later, I’m still on Mars.

If I say that to Yanghao, he’ll say, We’re on a bus.

Because he’s only nine and still annoying.

If I say I’m on a bus on Mars, he’ll say, We’re on a bus in Australia.

If I say we’re on bus number 105 to Northbridge Primary School, which is in Australia, which might as well be Mars because to me English still sounds like an alien language even though we’ve been here for two months, and so everyone else is an alien and he and I are the only humans, he’ll say, Jingwen, you’re a booger. That’s what he always says when he runs out of lame comebacks.

So I say nothing. I just want to get us to school. Not because I’m a weird, school-loving kid, but because that’s my responsibility. During our first week of school on Mars, Mama rode the bus with us. One week of training for me to memorize the way: a fifteen-minute walk from our apartment to the bus station, followed by bus number 105, get off after nine stops, and arrive at Northbridge Primary School; do the reverse for home. Yanghao doesn’t need to do anything except follow his big brother like a rat following stinky cheese. Which is a bad analogy since I smell okay.

This going to school and back by ourselves is a big deal. Back in our old home, Yanghao and I never went anywhere beyond our own street without a parent or grandparent. I can also tell it’s a big deal from the way Mama took a million pictures of Yanghao and me on this journey through the suburbs. Well, not a million, because the memory card on our secondhand digital camera can’t store that much. But there are more pictures than anyone needs of Yanghao and me in our new uniforms, with our new backpacks, standing outside our apartment, waiting for the bus, tapping our cards to pay the bus fare, standing by the school gates, et cetera, et cetera. We were going to get the pictures printed and mailed by actual mailmen to my grandparents since they don’t do emails. So I smiled like a clown in those pictures. Which is also a bad analogy since clowns are freaky. Nobody would paint such big smiles on their faces unless, inside, they are terribly sad.

The bus turns a corner, and Yanghao leans into me. Look-looklook, he says, elbowing me even though he’s already gotten my attention. Cake!

So what? I say. Have you never seen cake?

Yanghao makes his are-you-for-real face. Which I guess I deserve because back in our old home, far away from Mars, our family’s cake shop occupies the front part of our house, the part that should have been the living room. We see cake every day, every minute, every second, even in our dreams. If there’s an apocalypse and we all turn into zombies, while everyone else is stumbling around looking for brains, my family will be the odd ones craving something different.

Yanghao elbows me again and points to the box the alien is holding. "It’s from Barker Bakes."

Stop pointing, I say, stealing a glance at the alien in a more polite and less obvious way. On the box is the café’s logo—a whisk lying on its side. That’s where Mama works. At the café. Not in the logo. Or the box. I need to specifically point out that my mother doesn’t work in a logo or in a box, because I’ve been hanging around my little brother way too much these past two months since we came to Mars—on account of our having made zero friends—and he’d have definitely joked, Mama works in the logo? Or in the box? and then laughed so hard snot would shoot out of his nose.

Mama says he’s funny; I say he’s cuckoo.

The bus screeches to a stop.

Yanghao leans into me too much, much farther than the bus’s jerkiness would have made him.

The crowd of aliens on the bus has herded Yanghao and me to where we can’t reach a seat’s grab handle or anything to stop us from falling. The hanging loops don’t count—I can’t reach them even if I jump. Yanghao definitely can’t reach them. He’s short for his age because he used to get cooties that suck the blood you need to grow tall.

He and I domino into the alien with the cake.

The alien turns around and looms over us.

I can’t guess what he’s saying. The bottom half of his face is covered by a forest that muffles his voice. There’s no way to tell if his tone is be-careful-you-naughty-boys or no-worries-all-good. He’s wearing big, thick glasses, and I can’t see if his eyebrows are angry or not. I want to tell him he should forgive Yanghao and me because back in our old home, far away from Mars, we never took the bus, only our Honda CR-V. Not that we’re rich, but back there, the buses don’t go everywhere and they come about once every hour instead of every fifteen minutes like here on Mars. And those buses aren’t air-conditioned, and the seats smell like blue cheese, which I’ve never seen or eaten but have been told reeks of stinky feet. Plus, there are pickpockets. At least that’s what my grandparents told Yanghao when he whined some time ago about how it was unfair he wasn’t allowed to take a bus. He wasn’t dropped on his head as a baby—I don’t think so—but he’d watched an episode of SpongeBob SquarePants where there’s a red bus that looks like a lobster, which was why he wanted to try it himself—and then he was disappointed to find out the real ones don’t look like lobsters.

I’ll explain all that to the alien, and he’ll understand.

Yanghao elbows me—I swear, one more time, and I’ll chop off his elbow. He grins sheepishly. Luckily he didn’t drop the cake.

I’m still sore about that rainbow cake, but Ah-gong once said it’s good to let things go. Besides, the bearded, bespectacled alien is still staring at me.

I say, Pretend we’re talking.

Yanghao gives me his are-you-for-real look again. We are talking.

You know what I mean. Is he still watching me— don’tlooknow!

How can I know if he’s watching you if I can’t look?

Okay, look—but secretly.

Jingwen … he’s staring at you… he says in what is supposedly a scary voice. His eyes are bulging. He’s gritting his teeth…

The thing about Yanghao is, he doesn’t know when to stop. For anything. He’s always eating too much, always singing too loud, always crossing the line from a bit annoying to so annoying I have to thump him. And when he lies, he goes on and on, and I know he’s trying too hard to convince me.

His fists are clenched. His beard is trembling. His—

Riiight. I turn to see what the bearded, bespectacled alien is actually doing. That’s when I spot the girl standing next to him. She’s in a Northbridge Primary School uniform and about my age and staring at me. She notices me noticing and quickly looks at her feet.

3

The second time I was told we were moving to Australia, Mama broke the news by taking Yanghao and me to the special café that we’d only ever visited on weekends before.

I already knew a little bit about Australia because of the first time I was told we’d be moving there. Papa announced it over dinner. He showed us a book called Welcome to Australia, which had plenty of pictures of koalas and kangaroos.

Later, when I’d assumed that the first move to Australia was canceled, one of my classmates told me he was moving there. Turned out, he’d been having daily after-school English tutoring for a year. By the time he got to see the koalas and kangaroos in the flesh, I bet he knew more than just "apple and thank you and pie and sky and bathroom." But I didn’t tell Mama that I should first attend a year of daily English tutoring, not even after I got over the shock of her

Reviews for Pie in the Sky

[jennybeast · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

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.

[books9n9pickles · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

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.

[nclegern-495838 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Drawing on her own experiences immigrating to Australia, author and illustrator Remy Lai expertly reveals the emotion and hilarious internal life of 11 year old Jingwen. When Jingwen leaves his grandparents and home country behind to move to a new country with his mom and little brother, he feels like he is surrounded by aliens speaking an unrecognizable language. The illustrations emphasize this by showing people speaking with symbols in their speech bubbles. Lai regularly uses the illustrations zoom in on Jingwen's body language and anxiety. Additionally, Lai develop metaphors for the way Jingwen is feeling--illustrations with an developed explanation--to really help readers step in to his experience.Despite all the feelings, this is a laugh out loud, funny book as Jingwen deals with his annoying little brother. With his mom away working at a bakery, Jingwen is left to manage his brother's mischief and get into some of his own--namely baking which he loves. The family had own a bakery before and had dreamed of opening a bakery after they immigrated--they planned to call it 'Pie in the Sky'. This isn't the dream they had planned after the death of Jingwen's father, but they are all working toward a new dream and new life.

[reader1009-863136 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

children's diverse fiction (Asian family emigrates to Australia after car accident death of the father; 11-year old Jingwen struggles to learn English while being pestered by his annoying 9-y.o. brother Yanghao)
bittersweet immigrant story with lots of baking. Very relatable with lots of funny wimpy-kid-esque humor and drawings. All the stars!!!

[sweetiegherkin · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

When Jinwen moves with his mother and brother to Australia, he just cannot fit into this new place. It doesn’t feel like another country -- it feels like another planet. He doesn’t understand English well enough to get on, and it feels like everyone around him is a Martian. The one thing that makes him feel better is baking cakes with his little brother Yanghao. Problem is, their Mama has forbidden them to bake cakes on their own. But how else will Jinwen ever feel okay again?This story is the perfect blend of sweet and salty, as Jinwen eventually realizes is the recipe for a delicious cake. Jinwen is dealing with guilt and grief over his father’s death, yet the book does not feel dark or heavy. His struggles to make friends at school will surely be relatable to many a young reader, even if the specifics of his situation are a little bit different. Yanghao is a constant source of comic relief, and the descriptions of the cakes will leave your mouth watering for a sweet treat. In general, you will become attached to those two characters (and the side characters as well) and be loath to leave them when the book ends. I thought it was a very important message, told early on, that learning a new language is difficult and can make others seem unapproachable. Furthermore, as Jinwen points out, the shoe can easily be on the other foot -- he feels like the English-speaking Australians are speaking Martian, but he realizes that he and his brother speaking their native language probably sounds like Martian to the English speakers. Listening to the audiobook, I was wondering how the weird whirls and clicks to indicate the English words Jinwen doesn't understand would be presented in the print book. I ended up consulting a print version of the book and discovered that it is full of pictures! Some of these are in an almost comic book style and definitely add to the story. (For the record, the dialogue from these panels is read aloud in the audiobook, but the imagery really helps sell the story, showing more of Jinwen's emotional states.) For some reason, the audiobook narrator uses an Australian accent even though Jinwen and his family are not Australian*; an odd choice but otherwise he did a really good job of bringing the story alive, with emotion, different voices, etc. Another thing I liked about the print book was that the words Jinwen and others do use in English are the words that are italicized, a bit of a twist from when words in a non-English are italicized in the text. My one complaint with the language is that it does use some mild oaths like "crap" and "fudge," It's not a huge deal and some caregivers/parents might not mind at all, but I'm not a huge fan of that being in a book for kids. It's about the only reason I dinged the book half a star.The story itself will appeal to fans of Wonder and the mixed textual prose-comic illustrations style will appeal to fans of Invisible Emmie and Diary of a Wimpy Kid.*Jinwen and his family's home country is never explicitly stated. I've seen at least one review say China, but I'm not 100% sure of that. At one point, Yanghao responds to no language spoken to him, including Mandarin or Cantonese. Also, the author's blurb biography says she was born in Indonesia and grew up in Singapore, so it seems one of those countries might be more likely.

[coffeefairy · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

What a well done book on new experiences and grief. It’s not all about grief so it has laugh-out-loud, funny moments so it’s not always heavy stuff.

I think younger children will need some help with some of the cerebral concepts of grief and older children will identify with the main character.

As an adult who just lost a friend, I identified with the feelings of Jingwen, the guilt and sadness that we feel, the things we wish we didn’t say or the things we wish we’d say.

The analogy of seashells in pockets as a way to understand and process heaviness from grief is beautiful.

After I finished listening to the audiobook, I found out that the book won a lot of “best book of the year” designations, and I can see why.

Did the narrator have an Australian accent? I think he might have, and I admit that it was hard for me to get past that because I didn’t think the main character would have an Australian accent, having just moved to the country...

Love the inclusion of the rainbow cake recipe at the end and teachers and parents, there’s a study guide on the “Pie in the Sky” website that is very helpful for discussion.

[sjgirl-1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This made me equal parts hungry, heartsore, and happy.First, I want to note that while this is sometimes classified as a graphic novel, there is more prose here than illustrations (though there are illustrations scattered throughout).Eleven year old Jingwen, new to Australia along with his mom and little brother, struggles to adjust to using a new language, making friends proves challenging, and he’s still coming to terms with the loss of his father. The only place Jingwen finds solace is baking the special cakes his father intended to use for their dream “Pie In The Sky” bakery. Jingwen feels so good baking the first one, that he begins to see baking the cakes as the solution to all his problems, but mostly it creates other problems, including going against his mother’s rule about using the oven while she’s at work. I thought this was really well-paced, the gradual reveal of the significance of those cakes, particularly the rainbow one (recipe included), the guilt Jingwen carries over his father’s passing, and Jingwen’s overall growth. This is a kid who keeps his worries and his vulnerabilities bottled up, it’s believable how deep a hole he digs for himself before he’s willing to talk through his problems. Pie In The Sky is affecting nearly every step of the way, you cringe at Jingwen’s obviously misguided choices, you feel for the kid in his frustrations with and misunderstanding of English, your heart goes out to him in his tentative steps towards friendship, and in the moments where it hits him just how much he does care for his little pain of a brother. Jingwen spends much of this book in misery, feeling alone and alien, anxious over school, anxious over the language barrier, anxious over all the lying he’s done, but it’s a journey that reaches a well-earned uplifting conclusion.

[sgrame_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

11 year old Jingwen, his little brother Yanghao and their mother immigrate to Australia after their dad dies suddenly. It is very hard for Jingwen to catch on the language spoken, and ends up coping with the loneliness and missing his father by baking 12 elaborate cakes he had made with his father before he died. The antics of Jingwen and his brother as they keep the midnight baking hidden from their mother gets them into many narrow escapes and some hot water. Pressured to learn English or get put back a grade into his brother's class, just adds more to his shoulders as he is the main caretaker of his brother in a country that feels like Mars to him. Illustrations remind one of Diary of a Wimpy Kid. Recommended for grades 4-6.

[bookwyrmm_1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Very well executed novel about grief and learning to fit in that expertly mixes words and graphics.

[ewyatt_16 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Jingwen, his brother, and his mom move to Australia from China following his family's dream of opening a bakery called Pie in the Sky. Each page has a graphic in this heavily illustrated, quick read novel. The book focuses on Jingwen's rough transition to a new country where he doesn't speak the language, feels like an alien, and relies on baking to try to connect and find forgiveness about the death of his father. His brother is irritating. The boys try to bake without their mom knowing and need to eat (a lot) to hid the evidence.