I'm a foodie. Whenever I spot a book about food, particularly one that tells the story behind a recipe or dish, I'm in! This book (released March 2025) is SO unique and just cool, that I couldn't wait to buy it for my collection. BUDDHA JUMPS OVER THE WALL is a graphic novel cookbook that makes exploring Chinese cuisine engaging and fun because there are easy-to-follow visual instructions and a folktale, personal story, or historical event tied to each recipe. The stories are engaging, the recipes are easy to follow, and the art is superb. This book would make a great gift for the foodie in your life, and I could see young people (it's for all ages, but maybe ages 9-10+) wanting to make some of the recipes, with adult supervision :) :). Bonus points for ingredients that are easy to find at local grocery stores and for manga-esque vibe of the book.

Thanks to the publisher and NetGalley for letting me review this book. This was a fun read! I liked how each story told how the recipe came to be and the drawings were great as well. It felt like I was reading a manga. I can’t wait to try these recipes.

This is a lovely cookbook. I've never seen anything formatted quite like it and it is glorious. The artwork is fantastic and the recipes are mouthwatering. Also learning the history/culture surrounding each dish makes every page even more enticing.

An absolutely fabulous cookbook! Especially for adventurous cooks as well as folks who love a step by step photo process(its graphic illustrations in this) I loved this! I also love to cook and enjoy challenging myself in the kitchen this is a book I’ll look for at the stores and one I’ll recommend to folks widely. Thank you to NetGalley for the arc.

Most foodies love to hear stories about food, especially unique and foreign foods that aren’t familiar. Many Chinese dishes have strange names, and award winning author, Ying Chang Compestine has compiled many of her childhood dishes and their stories into an excellent cookbook, Buddha Jumps Over the Wall, and Other Curiously Named Classic Chinese Dishes: A Graphic Cookbook―26 Recipes & Stories. While this cookbook doesn’t contain a lot of recipes, the stories make it one that any foodie will want to curl up into a corner and read. This is a “comic book” cookbook and is colorful and fun to read.

The beginning of the book gives a nice background of the author and the dishes, as well as an explanation of some of the ingredients that go into those dishes. The recipes list the ingredients first, and then are followed by comic book entries with step-by-step instructions. The instructions are easy to follow and are understandable to cooks both beginning and seasoned cooks alike.

While there are delightful, colorful illustrations, there are no actual photographs of the dishes; this may be the only drawback to the book. However, the book is so fun that it is still worth putting on the cookbook shelf or coffee table. The strange names of the dishes are fascinating, and the book is interesting to read.

All told, this is a very unique book and one that is fun to cook from.

Special thanks to NetGalley for supplying a review copy of this book.

Stars: 4 for interest factor and foodie factor

My Thoughts:
This book would not necessarily be for this blog. I do have a specific cooking blog, The Rubber Slipper Contessa, which is actually a repository of family recipes more for my kids so that when my daughters in law or sons ask me where a certain recipe is, it is on the blog.

On the other hand, I found some of my old kid's cookbooks that I used to use to feed my littles and I gave them to my oldest granddaughter (she is 4). She loves to read it like a book, see the pictures and try some of the recipes. That got me thinking that this middle and YA reading blog is right where this graphic cookbook belongs.

First, the graphics are hilarious and crisp. They are a great stand in for the text sometimes. The story behind the names of the recipe are really lovely to read. There are some nuggets from the author and illustrator that just talk about family food stories, like the little vignette about learning to use starter chopsticks from her grandmother, and then as a mother, trying chopsticks for her son and instead focusing on finger foods that he would like. This particular story comes before the mango spring rolls which look yummy. I actually go and seek out mooncakes at my local Chinatown after this book. My granddaughter appreciated when I brought mooncakes because of the Netflix animated movie Over the Moon.

I think these recipes may be a little more difficult for young cooks. The sourcing of ingredients are difficult if you do not have an Asian market nearby. I guess Amazon, but there is something about taking young chefs to source their ingredients locally that makes it more real for them. I also think that these stories and recipes for middle and young adults will motivate aspiring cooks/chefs to have conversations with their own grandmothers about the food stories from their own family meals in the same way that the author talks about her own upbringing with her grandmother. It changes the way we look at food. If this, as an adult reader, motivates you to read more foodie books, I would suggest The Last Chinese Chef by Nicole Mones. I see tofu in a very different way. I think Buddha Jumps Over the Wall will do the same thing for budding foodies, chefs, Chinese food fans. Personally we are going to try the Husband and Wife Lung Slices for the name and the spicy factor.

From the Publishers:
Storytelling is one of the most universal and collaborative components in every culture. In Chinese culture, dishes are often connected to a classic legend, a famous person, or a historical event, underlining the importance of food.
In this delightful graphic novel-style recipe book, Chinese American cookbook author Ying Chang Compestine explores the folkloric stories behind beloved Chinese dishes and gives easy-to-follow recipes for each, such as:
Mapo Tofu, a savory dish named for the “old lady with a pockmarked face” who invented it
Goubuli Baozi (translation: "ignored by doggy stuffed buns”), classic buns with minced pork and vegetables made popular by an unusually taciturn village boy
Tear-inducing Heartbreak Jelly Noodles that combine chili oil, peppercorns, and other fiery ingredients and are believed to cure the sadness of a broken heart
Steamed Milk Custard, one of the most beloved desserts in China, originated during the Qing Dynasty by a hungry young cattle farmer as a way to preserve milk

These are dishes Ying grew up with, cooked with her grandmother, and prepares for her own family today. Stories and recipes are illustrated and presented in panel layout, with art by award-winning children’s book illustrator Vivian Truong.

Publication Information:
Author: Ying Chang Compestine
Illustrator: Vivian Truong
Publisher: Chronicle Books (March 4, 2025)
Paperback: 184 pages

The Pictures and stories are great are beautifully done. The stories are amazing. this title will be perfect for those who love origin stories, culture and food.

A combination graphic novel, culinary history, and cookbook, "Buddha Jumps Over the Wall" is a an enjoyable introduction to some lesser known dishes in the Chinese tradition. Compestine shares both the origin of each dish and how it was named along with detailed, illustrated instructions on preparing it. Whether the reader intends to recreate any of the recipes or not, the stories behind them are entertaining enough to appeal to even the most casual of foodies.

This was such a fun cookbook - different from any I have ever read. Buddha Jumps Over the Wall tells the background story of how each dish got its unique name. After each dish is explained in a fun, graphic novel format, the recipe follows in both traditional written and graphic form. I'm more of a visual person, so I loved the pictures that accompanied the recipes. The cookbook ends with a few other tidbits like chopstick etiquette and tea ceremony etiquette. The drawings were bright and engaging and I can't wait to try a few of the recipes. If you love Chinese food, you will enjoy this cookbook.

Thank you to Chronicle Books and NetGalley for this eARC!

A cookbook with stories about each recipe. The recipes looked just okay to me and I felt some of the stories were forced. But if I was going to China, I'd want to read this book in advance.

Thank you to NetGalley for an advance copy of this book. Annotated recipes are always fun!

What a great little cook book! It is so fun, the illustrations and comics are adorable. One of the most fun cookbooks I have read. I also really enjoyed the tidbits of history behind the meals. It made me appreciate the culture and feel immersed in it. The Lions head meatballs are great and I like the incorporation of tofu into the meals!

It’s good, but I’m not the target audience. This may be good for a middle to lower high school reader, and I feel like the recipes are too simplified for my personal taste. The art style is fun, but it doesn’t disclose the nastier histories of some food names (mapo tofu anyone?).

This is a fun sort of cookbook. It covers all the oddly named Chinese dishes, with stories behind the names, as well as how to make the dishes, step by step.
The book covers appetizers, main dishes, and desserts. The author talks either about the history of the dish, or her personal history with the dish, such as Ants Climbing a Tree (it is not made with ants), Old Pockmarked Lady’s Mapo Tofu and Stir-Fried Rooster Eggs with Tomatoes.


The stories are funny. The instructions go step by step, and all the ingredients are listed plainly. The author explains that when she was growing up during the Cultural Revolution, meat was rationed, so some of these dishes use very little meat, such as the Ants Climbing a Tree, where the meat is cut into very tiny bites, almost the size of ants.


A most enjoyable book to not only cook with, but also to learn about the strange names of dishes, and how to make them.


Thanks to Netgalley for making this book available for an honest review. This book is being published on March 4th, 2025.

What a fun cookbook! Chinese cooking with weird name explanations of the food explained in a story format through the graphic novel style of pictures. The recipes are made user friendly for ones not wanting to use the many times strange ingredients. Interesting concept for a cookbook.

I have read another novel which tells stories about how some of those Chinese dishes got those crazy names, such as the book’s title Buddha Jumps Over a Wall. Full of historical fact or fiction, it makes for a great graphic novel which also includes endearing illustrations to accompany the stories. To add even more flavor (get the pun there?) recipes are included for each dish.

Mind you, I am a Chinese-American and have been to many authentic Chinese restaurants, including those in mainland China and Hong Kong. I have to say that I have not seen many of these dishes with the odd names on the menu. The recipes were rather long and complicated and require quite a menagerie of sauces and ingredients, so being a lazy cook, I think I will just stick with my favorite dishes at Chinese restaurants.

Be forewarned, your mouth will definitely be savoring those tasty dishes. I sure do miss my grandmother’s Cantonese cooking!!

Buddha Jumps Over The Wall is a very cute and informative cookbook that ties together anicent history and mythology along with the more modern recollections of life in communist China. The illustrations are soft and relaxing yet still make me hungry. I would definitely be proud to add this to my graphic cookbook collection.

I really like this illustrated cookbook. It was so fun to learn the stories behind the dishes and to learn how to cook some of my favorite Chinese dishes. The art is fun and cute, and there are lots of different recipes. I also appreciated the information about common ingredients as well as etiquette for chopsticks,tea, and more. Overall this was a really fun book and it made my mouth water thinking about making all these incredible dishes. My only qualm with this book was that the images were a bit blurry. It might be because I read it in the NetGalley app or because it was a proof, but it did make ir difficult to read at times.

Muy buen libro de comida china. Bien redactado y dibujado. Este libro es muy buenos para aquellos que no les gusta un libro de cocina de puras instrucciones, los dibujos ayudan a entender los ingredientes y las historias detrás de los platillos. Definitivamente es un buen libro para todo interesado en la comida china, sea niño o adulto. Es un libro de cocina que te mantiene interesado. No pensé que los libros de cocina pudiesen ser así, esto debe ser el formato de los libros de cocina, fácil de seguir.

The most unusual cookbook I've ever read (in graphic comic book form!) with fantabulous illustrations with easy-to-follow recipes for delicious Chinese food. A perfect gift for the cooks in your life and for you, because you MUST have a copy for yourself!

I'm a sucker for an illustrated cookbook, and this one was great. I loved that it told the origins of the names, and also provided great details on cooking them.