As Xiao Ming plays in the park on a bright spring day, his mother teaches him ten Chinese characters, based on some of the things they see or experience in the park: earth, insects, bird, chirping, tree, twig, etc. For each character, Xiao Ming's mother points out aspects that reflect the object in reality (strokes that resemble the feathers on a bird, for instance); this is further reinforced with stylized drawings beside the actual characters they resemble in the glossary that appears on the books' endpapers. As with her two previous books featuring Xiao Ming learning Chinese characters, At the Beach (Holt, 1994) and In the Snow (Holt, 1995), Lee uses colorful cut-paper collages to illustrate the story. (Ages 6-9)