With the whimsy and creativity of Animal Crossing, Noodle & Bao tells the story of Momo’s mission to save her favorite restaurant, which turns into an effort to save her neighborhood. Life in Town 99 is changing, with increasing rent and neighborhood staples being replaced by fancy new stores and restaurants. Momo knows she must fight to save her beloved community. Along the way, she finds herself in sticky situations, like undercover investigations and cooking competitions, and learns a little something about community organizing.
This book is an entertaining, imaginative introduction to gentrification and community organizing. Although the aesthetic could appeal to students as young as elementary age, the issues that this book tackles are definitely a better fit for middle grade readers. I can imagine middle schoolers reading this just for fun or integrated into a unit on social justice.

I read an e-galley of Noodle & Bao and absolutely loved it! The discussion around gentrification is integrated in the story in a way that is perfectly palatable for young audiences. The Animal Crossing comp is spot on because the illustrations show a community of people and talking animals. This is going on my “Christmas presents for cousins” list because I think it’d make the perfect gift. I recommend this for upper elementary and middle school. This would be great for reluctant readers.

Noodle and Bao is a sweet, heartwarming graphic novel about community, cultural traditions, friendship, and standing up for what you believe in. The characters of Noodle, Bao, and Momo are so well developed and all show growth throughout the book, even the grown-ups! I also love that each character is introduced with their respective pronouns and there is so much diversity throughout the book. Many of the speech bubbles are written bilingually, representing when a character is speaking in another language.

Through the lens of Bao and Momo young readers will learn about gentrification and the effect it can have on diverse communities. The text also explores a theme of cultural traditions and how different generations might view and change these traditions.

Overall, this is a perfect book for late elementary and early grade readers. Thanks to NetGalley and HaperCollins Children's Books for the eARC in exchange for a review.

Noodle & Bao is a sweet tale of community advocacy, confidence-building, and a warm meal. The art is absolutely adorable, with expressive features and a pop of color. I enjoyed the layout and how the novel uses text (bilingual and pictorial). The characters were surprisingly well-developed, and I loved the animal designs. The characters spanned multiple generations, and the older characters grew and changed alongside the young protagonists. The historical note about Parcel C was informative, accessible, and did a lot to frame the story. Overall, Noodle & Bao is a sweet, comforting read that has such a sense of nostalgia. I enjoyed my time with this book and will definitely revisit it (with Chinese takeout).

Food, social justice topics, and a graphic novel equal a trifecta for a good book for elementary and middle schoolers, especially for kids I know. As an Asian American living in a highly gentrifying neighborhood I can see this book resonating with students in my local public schools. They can most likely relate to the characters and understand the tensions in the story. This will fit nicely into classroom libraries and school libraries.

Excellent! A lovely graphic novel appropriate for elementary - young adult audiences. There is discussion of gentrification and a brief history in the back of the book which adds beneficial context for the book. In this book, the grandson of a food cart/previous restaurant owner fights for his community, alongside a friend, to preserve the unique nature of the town, despite a new business moving in. Things escalate and the community comes together. This is both a heartwarming and affirming story, while ending with concerns over what will happen next--an appropriate and realistic finish.

cute Graphic Novel about family, friends and coming together to fight for what you believe in. Great information provided in the back about the history of gentrification.

Noodle & Bao is a sweet graphic novel about food, gentrification, and fighting to save what is important to you, Momo loves her town, and her favorite food is made by her best friend, Bao, and Bao's ahma, Noodle. They used to have a shop, but they were pushed out by a new fancy cafe. Now they serve food from a cart, but the cafe is trying to get them shut down. Momo organizes the community to save Noodle & Bao, but also to save their town - new people from the city are buying up property and raising prices so that the residents cannot afford to stay in their homes. A really great introduction to the concept of gentrification without being too heavy handed.

This graphic novel was a great example of gentrification and what can happen when a community works together to fight. I loved exploring the different food and culture throughout the story, even if it made me super hungry. I especially loved the information the author provided at the end of the story.

Usually, I am not a big of a fan of worlds where human characters exist in a non-magical world alongside talking animal characters, but that wasn't the case for this one. I adored the world. I love how it was tied to our own. I love the fact that they didn't necessarily get what they thought they wanted. The artwork was amazing, and I loved the fusion of food and t heir community.

Really touching book about multicultural multilingual community organizing. I love that this book is for a middle grade audience and breaks down ideas like gentrification and working class community values. I also giggled every time a diff animal showed up and was related to a human being.

Overall can’t wait for this to be published in the world!

Really cool story! I loved the characters and their design. The sparse use of color was super unique too. Definitely will appeal to younger kids who want to read manga.

This was a sweet partially-colored story about gentrification and fighting for your community in a way that young readers will easily grasp, understand, and relate to. Although a little far-fetched in instances, it fits in this fantastical community of humans and animals living together in what appears as an Animal Crossing-esque world

Noodle & Bao is a cute story about a family business being pushed out by gentrifying the neighborhood. The kids in the story try to push out a café that is taking business from their grandma's bao cart. What starts out as a feud, turns into inspiration and opportunity. Overall, this was a really cute story with great illustrations. I often found myself laughing at the antics while admiring the steadfastness of the main characters to preserve their culture and community. The only thing that I felt was unnecessary was the pronoun labels when a character was introduced. This could have been done in other subtle and normal feeling ways.

There is so much more to this book than I had expected!! Noodle & Bao isn't simply a story of a family and a community overcoming hardships amidst changes happening in their town; it's an easy-to-read lesson on gentrification and on China Towns and on the importance of traditions. I love how the author features the various foods and especially the ways that younger generations change the recipes up to modernize them - like the Cheeseburger Bao. I'd LOVE to eat a Cheeseburger Bao right now!!!
This is a really great book for middle grade students and I hope we'll start seeing it on lots of library and school shelves very soon!

I read a lot of middle-grade graphic novels, and Noodle & Bao feels quite different and fresh in a number of ways. The art style owes a lot to chibi manga, and the choice to populate Town 99 with a mix of humans and anthropomorphized animal characters adds another interesting facet. Add in LGBTQ+ characters and themes of gentrification, food, and family, and you've got something that's a lot of fun to read while also making you think! This would be interesting read alongside Sophie Escabesse's upcoming Taxi Ghost, which also tackles gentrification and the push and pull between grandparents and grandkids. Either or both would be great graphic novel book club picks for an elementary/middle grade audience.

Many thanks to the author, publisher, and NetGalley for the opportunity to read and review.

I wouldn't adopt the title as I teach orchestra, but I do think it was a good story with nice illustrations. I think the illustrations could be more colorful - I kept waiting for the book to be in more than just red and grayscale. Though the story was predictable, I liked the diverse characters and story line.

I adored this graphic novel. It portrayed the gentrification of a fantasy world Chinatown and the ways the community comes together to fight against it, based on real-life community organizing. The active inclusion of Traditional Chinese characters for Taiwanese Mandarin and written Cantonese with English translations beneath was a great way to highlight the varying dialects/preserve a realistic representation of Chinatown residents. (Can you tell I loved all the notes at the end?) I loved the back and forth between the younger and older generations, how each had legitimate points and missteps to make, and the way they navigated meeting each other to address the conflict. I also appreciated the queer friendly inclusiveness of titular character Bao using they/them pronouns.

I LOVED this book so much that I immediately pre-ordered it for my classroom. This is perfect for fans of Measuring Up and A Place at the Table. Even though this meant for middle grade students, this book tackles themes of food, community, immigration, and gentrification. The art is gorgeous, the depictions of food mouthwatering, and it's funny to see how like Animal Crossing, some of the characters are human and others are different animals-- including the main character's parents!

As an aside, I come from a similar background as the author and artist and I love how they captured the spirit of Chinatown in the graphic novel. The bilingual traditional Chinese/English dialogue in places touched my heart because the author explains the choices she made with using Cantonese and Mandarin that shows how rich and diverse their neighborhood community is. I already know that some of my students will be so excited to see their languages represented here.

I loved the children's commitment to help out the stand! I think this helped showcase how important food is, as well as the friends that become our family. As an adult reading this, it was a little weird trying to figure out the gene dynamics like how two pandas could have a little girl or how a fish could have a dog, but I dont think kids would even notice. It was fun!