Blocked, cuz of all the #$%^%^$@!, you ^%#^@*^&!

My wife just emailed me from her work. Apparently, her employer's much-threatened internet-use monitoring program has begun, and when she tried to check Rice Daddies this morning, she got this instead:

Access Denied
The requested document, http://www.ricedaddies.blogspot.com/, will not be shown.

Reason: DDR score = 54. This page will not be displayed because it contains prohibited words or it has exceeded its tolerance of questionable words.

Thanks a lot, a$$h*les! Heh.

UPDATE: Okay, so I googled DDR filtering and found this explanation: "DDR stands for Dynamic Document Review. It is a software filter, which "looks" at all sites before they are displayed on your computer. After the site is compared to the known lists, if it is not found it is scanned and given a numerical "score" based on its content. If this score exceeds a certain threshold, the site will automatically be blocked." So I don't know what her work's threshold number is (or what the fuck it's based on), but obviously, it's at least 54. So what does it mean?

It means this: Day-um, you Asian parents are nasty! Cuz apparently, of all of my wife's usual between-patients mix of parent- and food-blogs, besides RD, only these other blogs got blocked by her work's new internet content filter:

MetroDad, score of 56; Halfmama, score of 100; and Mama Nabi, score of 1-fricking-60! HA! So much for that model minority shit....

Any Day Now

I can't believe my wife is at 38 weeks now and the baby could be born any day. She is still growing and her breasts are getting more sore. She says she is feeling like a ripe fruit ready to go. Haha, don't ask me why I wrote that, but she says it a lot to me. The nursery is about done, and we are just waiting for some last minute furniture items. Everytime I get a call from her at work on my cellphone, I answer wondering if it is the call of "I'm in labor, come home quick!!!" In the fashion of fellow blogger Henri, here are possible scenarios:

Me: This is my hand and this is the speculum
Female Patient: Ouch, are you supposed to be in my rectum?
Me: Oh gees, sorry, umm, let me reposition the speculum.
Female Patient: You're doing a pap smear right?
Me: That's right, I got it now.
(My Phone Vibrates)
Me: Oh gees, hold on.
Female Patient: Umm, can you hurry, this is a litle uncomfortable.
Me: Hold on, (I answer the phone), Hello honey
Wife: Honey, hurry, I just broke my bag of water
Me: Woo hoo, I am on my way!
(I hang up phone, which then slips out of my hand into the patient's vagina)
Female Patient: What was that?
Me: Umm, this is a new medical device which checks the cervix.
Patient: Is it supposed to vibrate?
(Patient squeezes thighs together and shoots out the cellphone hitting me in the forehead.(okay, that really can't happen, but let's pretend))
Me: Got to run, wife in labor, laters.

Other scenario:
Me: Okay, this will be a quick prostate/rectal exam.
Male patient: Oh man, I hate this part of the exam.
Me: Trust me, its not the most favorite part of my job. Okay, here we go.
(My right finger in patient's rectum, cellphone goes off. I try grabbing phone with left hand)
Me: Hello honey.
Male patient: Hey, your finger is still in my butthole.
Me: Hold on one second and take some deep breaths or something.
Wife: Honey, come home quick, I broke my bag of water.
Me: Oh gees, I'll be right there.
(I try to close phone and it drops and I stupidly try to pick it up smashing my face into patient's hairy butt cheek)
Male patient: Hey, what are you doing?
Me: Um, I am trying to listen for your heartbeat in your buttcheek. Its a new physical exam test. Your prostate feels fine and good buttcheek heartbeat, but shave the hair. Gotta run.
(Patient farts and blows my finger out!!!)

Anyways, of course, these are worse case scenarios. Let's hope my wife goes into labor late at night while I am at home, but I guess you just never know. Either way, we are totally excited and just hope for a quick and least painful labor. Its the beauty of the epidural!!!

Going to be a New Daddy

Coincidentally, I'm also the newest Rice Daddy.

Before I get started, I must thank daddy in a strange land for letting me play in your sandbox. Also, shout out to Instant Yang for turning me on to the site in the first place and planting the idea in my head that I could lay out all my joys and insecurities about being a prospective parent on this site.

As for myself, I'm a 29-year old Chinese American originally from VA and now reppin' outside B-more, MD. My wife of five years (this April!), Nakko, is originally from Japan, and we're expecting our first child in July. The other member of the family is a 12-year old border collie/lab mix named Spaz (who, by the way, was kind enough to let me link to his blog on the contributors' list. Thanks, Spaz!).

So far, we've had a very interesting first six months of the pregnancy. First off, Nakko was in Japan visiting her family when she found out. The day she was supposed to fly home, my wife called to say that she had delayed her flight because she had gotten sick and was too nauseous to sit on a plane for 19 hours. When she first told me I wasn't that concerned since I figured it was just something she ate and she'd just feel better in a few days. I also thought the idea of getting back on a plane probably contributed to her illness -- my wife loathes flying and would much rather travel using Doraemon's dokodemo door.

I called my parents to let them know about Nakko's delay, and my mom joked "maybe she's pregnant." In a truly GMTA moment, Nakko's mother in Japan had the same idea and brought home a pregnancy test. The rest, as they say, is history. A history I'll be telling you all about in upcoming posts.

The last thing I'll leave you with is this quote from a good friend of mine. The sentiment simultaneously moves me and scares me silly. We decided early on that we wanted to know the gender of our child (we don't really like surprises), and were excited to learn my wife was carrying our daughter inside her belly. My friend, Shafeeq -- who has three daughters of his own, so naturally, I asked him for advice -- said this to me:

"You will be the first man your daughter will fall in love with, so take the responsibility seriously."

Take Me Out to the Ballgame

I hope the folks here won't mind if a share a proud papa moment. As I wrote before, Number One Monster is a Little League baseball player. Unfortunately he didn't get drafted up into the higher division as we hoped so we were a bit disappointed. But on the otherhand maybe it let's him play a much bigger role in his lower division team.

His new team was hurting for pitchers and catchers and previously my son didn't want to pitch or catch but decided to give both a go again to help the team. I was proud that it was a good change in attitude, previously he stuck to hitting and didn't want to try something new.

So we had our first scrimmage game this weekend. Bottom of the 4th, my son comes up with the bases loaded. WHAM line drive to the fence - a grand slam inside-the-park homerun! His first home run too. Team is really excited and it was fun to see but I'm keeping a level head here. He was already a good hitter and inside-the-park homeruns are fairly common in Little League. But my wife and I let him know we were proud of him.

Well, the inning ends and now it's time for my son to pitch in his very first game ever. I'm more nervous here because kids always have trouble throwing strikes. Last season he saw his teammate use curveballs to fool the batters and so on his own he made up an offspeed pitch. Now most kids in minors Little League have only one pitch because the important thing is to just throw strikes. That pitch is a fastball (which for many isn't very fast at all. Fortunately, my son has decent velocity on his.) In practice, he threw his loopy offspeed for more strikes than his fastball so I was thinking this could work out well.

And it sure worked out because kids his age are badly fooled by mixing up fastballs with offspeed pitches. They can't figure out which pitch is coming in. One poor kid thought a fastball was coming, lunged out three feet in front of the plate and already finished his swing before my son's slow offspeed pitch bounced slowly past him. We coaches couldn't help laughing. Result - 3 strikeouts! (And he plunked one poor kid with a wild fastball.) What was really cute was my son took the initiative and worked out the signs with his catcher. My wife even caught that, she saw him nodding to the catcher on every pitch and noticed the catcher giving signs. Priceless!

So now he is really pumped up and we're all looking forward to a fun season. Thanks for indulging me all! :D

Book Review Contest Winners' Round-Up

So a whole bunch of last month's book review contest winners have obliged my request for reviews of the books they received from Kane/Miller Book Publishers. Below I'm posting links to reviews posted on winners' own blogs, and below that I'm putting up reviews sent directly to us. I hope that these reviews inspire you to check out their globe-spanning catalog of American, English-language editions of children's books originally published in other countries and add them to your children's collection.

Superha's review of Kali and the Rat Snake by Zai Whitaker (India)

Rachel's review of Who's Hiding? by Saturo Onishi (Japan)

Eliaday's review of The Zoo by Suzy Lee (South Korea)

Kim's review of The Story of Cherry the Pig by Utako Yamada (Japan)

Honglien123's review of The Mats by Francisco Arcellana (Philippines)

Kerri Aldrich's review of New Clothes for New Year's Day by Hyun-Joo Bae (South Korea)

Naomi on Naomi Kojima's Singing Shimiji Clams (Japan):
I was afraid this book might be too long to hold my three year old's attention, but it cracked her up. It's the story of a witch who buys some clams for her miso soup but has misgivings about cooking them and ends up having them sing for their supper, so to speak. She has a cranky cat who eventually learns to love the clams, too, and they take them back to the sea where everyone is happier. As someone who has a problem with choosing lobsters at restaurants, the theme was very familiar. We heartily enjoyed the story. Thanks, Rice Daddies and Kane Miller!

Christina on Yoon-duck Kwan's My Cat Copies Me (South Korea):
Hey, thanks to Kane/Miller Books for making us all winners. I received the book "My Cat Copies Me" by Yoon-duck Kwan, also the illustrator. It is a story about a little girl (though it could have been about a little boy since it was written in such an open, generic manner) and her kitty cat. It is a sweet story about the connection and bond between the child and her pet, they are friends and do everything together, they play, explore, hang out, and support each other. The illustrations are beautiful with a delicate, soft look to it. They are colorful and bright but not garishly so. I look forward to sharing this with my daughter when she is old enough to handle soft pages in a book.

Mommy de Gallo on Ho-Baek Lee's While We Were Out (South Korea):
We received our copy of "While We Were Out" by Ho Baek Lee. It came at a very nice time in our lives, as my daughter is starting to develop relationships with our own two pets. This simple story is about a pet (?) rabbit that explores the house while it's owners are out. Funny enough, all of the things the rabbit does in the home are things that my daughter also enjoys. The simple story, and lovely illustrations are just right to capture the imagination. This story has opened up my child's mind as to what exactly our cat and dog are up to when we leave the house? I know that they just lie around and sleep, but she is using her imagination to create stories about the games they are playing, and blaming them when her toys are misplaced. Thank you Rice Dadies for a great book!

We were a "Blog of Note"!

So apparently, Rice Daddies was a Blogger "Blog of Note" for Thursday, March 8, 2007. Yeah, I know that was a week-and-half ago, but I didn't know till a comment the other day mentioned it. So yay us!

Kiss Me I'm Irsh

So MetroDad and I have always joked about the strange similarities between our lives. The whole French first name thing, the whisky thing, the blogging thing, the whiskey thing, and finally the scotch thing. But the other day when I read his post on MetroDad I just had to shake my head and realize that there is no avoiding the fact that one of us is the imaginary creation of the other. We'll have to fight it out who gets to be Tyler Durden but in the mean time I wanted to post our posts in honor of St. Patrick's Day.

From MetroDad Last Week:

You may not know this but Koreans and the Irish share a special affinity. More often than not, people call us the "Irish of the East." We're both hard-working people with chips on our shoulders and a reputation for being tough, mean, chain-smoking drunks. We love boozing, singing, and getting into fights (preferably all on the same night.) Our people share a history of oppression from neighboring countries and have a homeland still divided by politics and rage. We'd kill or die for our families. And nobody eats more fucking cabbage than we do.

And here's an excerpt from the post I was writing for St. Patricks Day.

Oh yeah what was I talking about...yes Koreans are the Irish of Asia. We love to drink, we love to fight, and we love to spout poetry in long drunken monologues. We have a history of oppression by an imperialistic island monarchy that loves tea and some say....have historically bad teeth.

Crazy. MetroDad never saw my draft, and I had first written it when I joined Ricedaddies...I just decided to save it for St. Patricks Day. Here's the full unfinished post. Have some Guinness or Bulmers maybe a bit of Jameson's or Tullamore Dew. Hold a bit of Ireland in your heart and think of her beautiful green hills. A drink for all my friends...Slainte!

The Koreans are the Irish of Asia. I've been sayin it all my life. So I have this Irish thing...former life or whatnot. I don't know how to explain it, but it came back to me one night when I was singing to my boy. So I was singing Danny Boy to my son like I do every night, and he was smiling like a good Irish kid and towards the hard part of the song...you know the hard part right? You don't? You should. Anyway...he starts clapping and I'm like...what? I haven't taught him that yet. So I think...there it is that Irish thing rearing up again. I thought it was a fluke until last night when I was telling the Mrs. about it and she didn't believe me so I started singing again and just like before he starts beaming and clapping. Now I know I'm genetically 100% pure Silla Bone-Rank Korean but I think my son definitely has that wierd thing I've had for as long as I remember...the thing that says come home we miss you. And so far it's just Danny Boy that does it. When I sing Straight Out of Compton he just stares. Oh yeah what was I talking about...yes Koreans are the Irish of Asia. We love to drink, we love to fight, and we love to spout poetry in long drunken monologues. We have a history of oppression by an imperialistic island monarchy that loves tea and some say....have historically bad teeth. But as a racially insensitive imperfect human being, sometimes I do think about race. I think about how I never think about it and just kinda walk through this world. But we're often categorized and held up to stereotypes. Yeah blah blah blah...but I think of situations like barroom fights. I think about how I would tell the story to my boys.

Henri: Damn dude I was outside the Irish Bank last night and out of nowhere this guy's all flashing and I'm like what and he's like wassup and so we get into it and I nail him and he's like all I'm gonna get my boys and I'm like all go back to high school and he's all whatever and he leaves and I'm like dude that's what I thought.

And then I think here's his version...

Dude: Man I was at the Irish bank and this little Asian guys was all whatup and I'm like get outta here little man and this little Asian guy hits me in the mouth for nothing!

I mean...why do I have to be the "Asian Guy" in the story?

Reunion Time!

To be exact, my 20th high school reunion is this year. WOW, time sure flies!

The thought of the reunion brings back lots of memories, both good and bad. From an Asian dude social point of view, the bad was remembering every girl at my high school who I asked out on a date said no. (Yes, I admit it! And that sucked!!!) The good was having one bold and popular Chinese girl actually ask me out on a date. (I said yes, and she became my high school sweetheart and a good friend to this day.)

Back then I was just another politically apathetic Asian dude trying to fit in. My school was for the academically gifted so we had a proportionately high number of Asians in my class; 15% of the student body was Asian. But our Asian American Society organization was so pathetic; our only highlight was our annual Chinese New Year show. Our parents seemed to be similarly apathetic, getting good grades and a 1600 on the SAT (that’s all it was back then) seemed to be their only concern. (Seriously, I actually did have Asian friends whose parents expressed profound displeasure at scoring only a 98 on tests.)

I was quite different back then. I tried to be pretty color-blind with respect to everything including girls (my Mom’s greatest fear was I would bring home a non-Chinese girl.) I might have even enjoyed watching Sixteen Candles back then (Boo! Hiss!) I had no clue about the biases of American media and how it was affecting me and my Asian brothers and sisters. I guess I was just lucky that I was too stubborn to let “no” stop me.

Fast forward 20 years, I have the Chinese wife my mother always nagged me to have and 3 boys and a girl who in no time will be in high school too. Playing catch-up on Asian American issues was painful and I look back at my last 20 years with a humble “what the hell was I thinking!?” I’m making sure my kids are much more aware of Asian American issues and don’t go through what I did. And that my boys enjoy their high school social experience more.

Now back to the reunion. I have this real selfish urge to show off my wife and tell everyone that she’s my trophy wife, especially to the girls who turned me down. (I’m just kidding!) But bless her Asian genes and her addiction to working out; she gorgeous, looks 21 and weighs the same as when we met - even after 4 kids! My wife nagged to be dressed appropriately for the reunion and I asked her, “Why? You’re the only accessory I need to wear to the reunion.” [ducks…]

P.S. That was supposed to be a compliment.

DOLLS: Two New Educational Proposals Added to the SoulSnax Diversity in Media Challenge

We are all well aware of the role that dolls play in our children's development. And as RiceDaddies, we're also well aware of the special need for dolls that reflect back on the uniqueness of our little ones in a positive, responsible, non-stereotypical way.

With that in mind, I've added two new educational proposals to the SoulSnax Diversity in Media Challenge:

• Diversity Dolls
• Dolls to Help My Students Use Their Imaginations

Our goal is to raise $3000 by June 30. So far, we're only 3% of the way there. So donate now. Do it for the kids!

Putting the fun back in rice daddies -the chow fun, that is

beef chow fun
Originally uploaded by Scuzzi.

Yeah, I know.

Racism = bad; Identity = good.

You what such a heavy conversation needs? a side of yummy noodles. So, I vote we bring the conversation back to the dinner table.

(tech note, there's supposed to be a yummy pic of some greasy chow fun to the right here, but all I get is a stupid little empty box)

Shades of freedom

I've been reading a bunch of posts lately, by hapa parents and/or parents of hapas, about that periennial old miscegenated bugaboo [no, not the stroller, look it up], the "why don't I/how can they/who's keeping me from fit(ting) into the group(s) I/they claim as my/their own" question. Twizzle touched on how the media's "black enough/not black enough" game with Sen. Barack Obama raised the old questions for her and her daughter over on Kimchi Mamas. Carol wrote about yearning for a community of multiracial/interracial AsAm families and why it's important to her on Bokumbop. Over on her blog, Mama Nabi sought tips about how to teach her mixed daughter about difference after LN started making her first early connections between difference and ideas about "normality." Michelle Myers wrote a deep post on Anti-Racist Parent about how and why a multiracial child might not even find community in that most basic of places, the family unit. And on connected notes, here on Rice Daddies, Monster Daddy wrote about how his daughter's formulation of Chinese-ness (and its equation with abnormality) is freaking him the fuck out, while our own Soulsnax, before he even joined us, called out the forces of mental colonization and self-hatred for already messing with his newborn daughter in her first days of life.

Okay, it's way later than I've been staying up lately, so I'm sorta rambling here, but this kinda shit is stuff I've been thinking about and grappling with my entire adult life, as someone who calls himself, variously, a student, a teacher, an activist, a scholar, a parent, and, important here, a multiracial Asian American. Before I totally become incoherent, let me do a couple things. First, here's a link to Prof. Maria Root's "Bill of Rights for Racially Mixed People" [yeah, I know the name changed, but that's what it was called when the joint came out in college, so that's what it still is to me]: I've linked to it elsewhere and often, but this thing crystallized so much for me back in those heady identity-formation-filled college days.

Second, check out this essay by African American Salon.com columnist (and mother of two biracial black/white kids) Debra Dickerson [yes, she of the infamous "Barack's not 'black' black b/c he's not descended from West African enslaved people in North America" argument, which really was more about how some white folks might be giving themselves a guilt-free pass for supporting a "black" candidate without dealing with America's racial history and present than about labeling or de-labeling Brother Obama, but anyway]: "Don't be black on my account: A black mother's gift to her biracial children." It's a fascinating look at how a politically and socially conscious and active mom of color from a community with a different history with miscegenation and the inclusion/exclusion of racially mixed people than AsAms is reckoning with these kind of hard questions in her own life and family.

At any rate, I hope this article, and bits and pieces of the blogposts I've referenced here, might open up dialogue in the comments here about these issues—about creating, finding, and redefining community for us and for our children, about ideas of inclusion and exclusion, about how our own experiences with all this crap in our own lives affects, consciously and unconsciously, how we might deal with this stuff in teaching our children about it, and about themselves, their families, identities and communities, and what it all means.

Okay, that's ramble-y enough. Time for bed. Heh.

Baby Shower

Our wonderful friends recently threw us a great baby shower. It was cool to have foods at the shower from multiple different Asian cultures like Japanese, Korean, Thai, and Filipino. One of our friends even got a recipe from the Kimchi Mamas on how to make a Korean dish. The best part of the shower was to see the ethnic diversity of our friends and how they all had a good time together. I think the only scary part of the shower was them posting up a picture of our soon to be baby which was a morphed picture of my wife and I. I sure hope our baby turns out a lot better looking than that picture.

The baby is due in just a few weeks, and I am starting to have some palpitations and diarrhea. I don't know if some of the dad's went through this before their first child was born, but I have moments of excitement and moments of sheer panic. I can't believe I am going to be a parent of this child. The baby shower was pretty much the icing on the cake that this baby is real and that my wife and I are going to have a son. Sometimes it all seems so surreal. Any tips of how to deal with those moments of fear that happen before the baby is born besides running to the bathroom... Oh the woes of irritable bowel...

More Book Review Contest: Green Eggs and Ham

I know, I know, I said the contest was over (except for, of course, the most excellent reviews by the winners of their prizes that, I am sure, are wending their way to me via email even as we speak). But after I called out all the daddies for not stepping up, I got this email from reader (and dad) rockcreek. Seems he sent me his review on February 17, but left out the "a" in my handle/email address and so I never got it. Sucks, dude! But to give props to the only other dad to (try to) enter the contest [or should I say, "props to pop"?], and because Friday was the venerable Dr. Seuss' birthday, here's one more review.

Title: Green Eggs and Ham
Author/Illustrator: Dr. Seuss
Reviewer: rockcreek

EVERYBODY loves Dr. Seuss books. Now that I'm re-reading them 35 years later (give or take), I've only just realized how brilliantly written and illustrated they are. As a kid, you're always taken by pictures, and the trippy Roald Dahl vibe mixed with the Rube Goldberg-esque contraptions wouldn't really register. You'd just see two furry dudes, one looking somewhat pissy, the other holding a vaguely unappetizing plate of green food, having a talk in a car with a goat, fox, and a mouse, on top of a train car which just jumped some impossibly rickety tracks and is headed for the smokestack of a ship. "Cool!"

Then the writing. These are great to read with my eldest son, who is mildly speech delayed. The rhyme scheme helps him process, so when I read, "You may like them / You will see. / You may like them / in a... ", he jumps right in with " ... TREE!" His books are a speech therapist's dream, and their publishing seems to predate the development of many commonly used practices for childhood language acquisition (e.g. using simplified vocabulary, repeating phrases, etc.) And the rhyme and the meter never seem forced or clumsy. ("Green Eggs" is 60 pages; I doubt I could communicate "wash your hands" in a rhyming meter.)

On top of that, the Doc manages to fit in overarching lessons of socialization about the value of persistence and taking risks. That he managed to get all of this in between the cover of a single book makes this one my favorite.

Whoopeeee! I Made It!

Ahh, the sweet smell of success: Dreft, baby wipes, fresh diapers, soiled diapers, cradle cap...

Hi, I'm SoulSnax, a newly minted Rice Daddy, and it's been a long road to fatherhood. It's great to have achieved the rank of Rice Daddy, but I almost didn't get the chance to be among you today...

Our children face many humanitarian issues in this day and age: famine, war, GENOCIDE, child slavery... But the one humanitarian crisis that we never address is the plight of children who may never get to be conceived because of the sad fact that Asian men have been robbed of their sexual capital... That's right, I said it: we lack "bed-cred."

As Monster Daddy mentioned previously, we might not be "normal" enough to mate with. Blame it on whatever you will: the media, colonization, Nintendo...

So with that in mind, I've worked damn hard for what little sexual capital I got. I obviously didn't have the looks, so I had to work on my personality. And as if that weren't enough, it took me forever to de-program my wife's colonized mind before she could ever date me. It was a tough battle, but it was worth it. Seven years later, and now we're the proud parents of a gorgeous baby girl we named Ella (cuz she can wail ...and scat too!). We couldn't be any happier. Just ask my wife. She'll tell ya all about it.

In addition to being a RiceDaddy, I'm a wannabe beatnik whose poetry and prose has been performed at various venues in NYC, most notably at the Five Points Poet's Lounge (formerly known as Teabag). I've also dabbled in filmmaking, coerced by my wife to produce shorts based on my prose and poetry. And I've got some failed business ventures under my belt too, most notably a mail-order-groom website that tried to partner Asian men with American women. It failed miserably for some reason. I don't know why.

My most recent endeavor is the Soulsnax Diversity in Media Challenge, a charity we set up in lieu of a Babies R Us registry. All proceeds go toward selected educational programs that counter the effects of the culturally-negligent, GENOCIDAL media we're all addicted to. It's the Opium War of the 21st Century. So check out the educational programs, and consider making a donation. Do it for the kids!

Blogaversary Book Review Contest Wrap-Up

Taking a quick break from our usual fare of AsAm dad sports injuries, I thought I'd wrap up our Blogaversary Children's Book Review Contest by announcing our winners and prizes.

First, thanks to our reviewers: Honglien123, Naomi Shapiro, Kim, Mommy de Gallo, Rachel, Stephanie, Christina Williams, Superha, Kerri Aldrich, Carol, eliaday, and peachboy. It was great to read about your childhood favorites and why you want to share them with your kids, to discover some new finds and be reminded of old favorites.

So, who won? Thanks to the generosity of Kane/Miller Book Publishers—everybody! Each of our reviewers will receive a different book (selected at random) from the following list of twelve titles from Kane/Miller's catalog of children's books originally published in Asian countries:

My Cat Copies Me (S. Korea)
New Clothes for New Year's Day (S. Korea)
The Zoo (S. Korea)
While We Were Out (S. Korea)
Yellow Umbrella (S. Korea)
The Story of Cherry the Pig (Japan)
Who's Hiding? (Japan)
Happy Birthday Coco (Japan)
Singing Shijimi Clams (Japan)
Guji Guji (Taiwan)
The Mats (Philippines)
Kali and the Rat Snake (India)

See? Everybody got something! Don't you wish you had entered? And another thing—you know we love our mommy readers, but yo, where my daddies at? Props to Peachboy for stepping up—what, the rest of y'all don't read to your kids? Heh. Show me up next time, okay?

Anyway, all our winners are invited to send us a review of the book they won for posting here on Rice Daddies. We hope you and your kids enjoy your books. And of course, i can't end this without giving an extra-special shout-out to Sondra LaBrie, Kane/Miller's marketing manager, without whom this wouldn't have happened. Or, it could've happened, you just wouldn't have actually won anything. Heh. Thanks, Sondra!

Okay, back to our regularly scheduled programming....