When he is transferred to Yokohama, they decide to marry, and it is there that the author, Allen Say is born. While there she meets Say’s father, a Korean man adopted by English speaking parents. May desperately misses America and moves to the big city of Osaka where she gets a job in a department store helping foreigners who speak English. They also decide that it is time to arrange a marriage for her. May plans to go to college, but her parents decide that it’s best for them to move back to Japan so that she can become a proper Japanese lady. She embraces the Japanese culture at home, but becomes very Americanized at school and with her friends. Say’s mother, Masako, better known as May to her American friends, is born in San Francisco to Japanese immigrant parents. 4-8.Tea with Milk tells the story of author and illustrator Allen Say’s parents in this beautifully illustrated book. Both an 'ugly duckling' romance and a universal story of leaving home, this is a picture book that will have intense appeal for older readers. They speak English ('at last, a real conversation') they drink their tea with milk and sugar and when their son, Allen, is born, they speak English to each other and Japanese to him. Like many foreigners everywhere, she discovers her home in the city, where she finds work, opportunity, and a husband from an even more diverse background than her own. When she rebels and breaks away, the bright red color of her fitted dress is as startling to us as to the staring villagers. In a climactic scene, she sits fuming on a park bench next to the stuffy banker with whom an arranged marriage is planned. The pictures of Masako show her sad and wooden, bound up in a kimono, kneeling on the floor, or walking alone in the empty schoolyard. Together, they tell an elemental story that will appeal to everyone who feels a stranger at home. Say's watercolors are quieter in line and color this time, and the text is much longer. She must learn to be a 'proper' Japanese lady. Instead of college, she has to go back to high school to learn Japanese. Masako becomes a foreigner in her parents' country, longing for home in San Francisco. Say tells her immigrant story: how, when she finished high school in California, her restless, homesick father took the family back to live in his village in Japan. On the title page of Say's new picture book, there is a small frame from his Caldecott-winning Grandfather's Journey (1993), a picture of his mother, Masako, as a Japanese American child in California.

Tea with milk by allen say