eyes that kiss in the corners illustrator

There’s her mother: “When Mama tucks me in at night, her eyes tell me I’m a miracle.” Amah’s eyes are “filled with so many stories I can fall inside them and swim until time stops.” Her younger sister’s eyes “disappear beneath her two-tooth smile when I walk in the door.” This is a house full of girls and women (as far as we can tell), and the narrator speaks devotedly of each throughout the book. The spreads featuring her Amah (one is pictured below) sweep across the pages, Dung often depicting the subject of traditional Chinese stories that Amah shares (Guanyin with the Monkey King, in one instance).

The palette is largely one of warm, luminescent earth tones with the girl’s vivid crimson dress popping off the page. This ode to self-acceptance, self-respect, and familial legacy features the sunny, brightly colored illustrations of Dung Ho in a style that recalls the work of classic Disney artists. The girl is Asian, and she loves her eyes, which are just like her Mama’s and her Amah’s and her sister’s. “I have eyes that kiss in the corners and glow like warm tea,” we read when we finally see her face on the following spread (pictured below). What does she think when she sees her face? As she waves to classmates on the next spread - once again, we see her from behind - she notes that their eyes are shaped differently than hers. On the first spread of Joanna Ho’s Eyes That Kiss in the Corners (Harper, January 2021), we see a young girl on her way out of the house, backpack on her shoulders.

“My eyes that kiss in the corners and glow like warm tea are a revolution.”

Eyes that kiss in the corners illustrator