The Story About Ping
Written by Marjorie Flack. Illustrated by Kurt Wiese.
Year of original publication: 1933.
This is a story about a little yellow duckling that didn't want to be last back on to his boat and get a spanking. So instead Ping hides and because of this his boat leaves him and he's not lost. He gets in to trouble but luckily finds his way out of it all and soon enough he sees his home again. This time he is still last to get to the boat but he takes the spanking anyway because he just wants to be back home.
The only characters in this story other than Ping the duck are humans and are all of Chinese decent. For the most part I believe the characters were depicted as culturally correct as in not in a negative stereotypical way.
In a way the story is both stereotypical and true to the culture. Shown on a few pages are fishing boats. Fishing boats are a part of the some Asian lifestyles and ways of occupation. Of course, this is something we associate Chinese culture with. So at first thought one would think of fishing and small boats with Asians. In the story, Ping has a huge family, I believe that's something stereotypical about the the Chinese culture - to have a big family. Also for the fact that Ping is the only duck with a name. It's a Chinese name and they made Ping the only yellow duck and a stereotypical and sometimes racist term is to call Asian's "yellow". Another stereotypical thing is that at one point, a little boy catches Ping and his family wants to eat him. Duck is one of the food we think about Chinese restaurants having. The little boy's mother tells him that she will cook the duck with rice and it's quite stereotypical to say that all Asian eat rice or always eat rice.
The owner of the boat has the power to call his ducks to him and get them back on his boat. As are the other humans in this story, like the little boy who catches Ping. Then his parents do as well as they tell the boy they are going to have the duck for dinner and take Ping and keep him under a basket for later.
The author Marjorie Flack was White and did not fit the cultural group she was representing in in her book. Kurt Wiese was the illustrator and he was born in Germany but spent a great deal of time in Japan. His art was highly influenced by Asian culture which was why a lot of his art is Asian themed.
The humans were drawn as drawn in a very stereotypical way, with very, very squint-y and small eyes, dressed in traditional Chinese clothing. The language used is mostly in English. But there is one part where the master of the boat sings "La-la-la-la-la-la-lei" and I'm not sure if that's just the words the author decided to use or because she thought it would fit with a Chinese character.
To be honest I don't feel as if this book was that bad. I don't think I'd read it to my students unless I talked about the story afterwards. So if I decided to use it in a lesson I would have an activity to explain everything afterwards. But basically I don't think I would use this book, in my opinion it's just a 'fun' book. You don't learn much from it so I would have no reason to use it.
