Yanghao's antics are great and Jingwen has a kind of offbeat-lite sense of humor.

If all that sounds heavy, it is.but it's also very, very funny. 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. 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.ĭespite 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. 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.

Jingwen is almost twelve and his zany, super-energetic little brother Yanghao is almost ten when they move with their mother to Australia. 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.

Pie in the sky remy lai