Last Tuesday the Lower School were delighted to welcome Karen Li, and her husband Tak, who shared their fantastic story ‘The Golden Mango Tree’ in an after-school workshop. The book is an adventure of change and hope and highlights the challenges of growing up as part of a multicultural family spread across the world. 

Pupils were enthralled as Karen read the story, and they discussed ways in which they came together as families to celebrate different events in the year. As the extended family gather together in the book, Karen asked the pupils about their favourite foods and they discussed all the ways that food brings us together. Pupils were able to talk about their own favourite meals, such as sausages, dim sum, spaghetti and prawns, and Albanian bread.  

The discussion then moved on to the challenges of staying in touch with extended family across the world and putting down roots in different countries. Pupils had family members in the US, Hong Kong, Iran and different parts of the UK, and came up with a variety of suggestions for how they keep in contact.  

The session then moved to more practical activities and pupils had a chance to use chop sticks to pick up fortune cookies, as well as having a go at Chinese writing, and admiring the amazing Chinese dragon that Karen had brought with her.  

The afternoon celebrated the pupils differences, helping one another with using chopsticks and engaging in discussions about their own family traditions. All pupils received a signed copy of the book to take home with them and were inspired to become authors and illustrators themselves!