Andrea Wang: Hi, my name is Andrea Wang, and I'm an author of picture books and middle grade novels. My most recent picture book is Luli and the Language of Tea, written by me and illustrated by Hyewon Yum, published by Neal Porter Books.

Tea has been a huge part of my life ever since I can remember. My parents were Chinese immigrants, and that's pretty much all they drank, was tea and plain hot water. That was my mom. She drank plain hot water as well. Every person who visited our home was offered tea and snacks as just a gesture of hospitality, no matter what their background or even age. My memories of tea go really far back, and I have very fond memories of tea. My father used to carry a thermos of hot tea no matter where we went, even to the grocery store. When I found out that the word for tea was the same in many languages, I really had to find out if that was true and why.

I have to say that I love the illustration that Hyewon has made. They are just perfect. I think the colored pencil, the textures, the way that she's depicted each child from each different country, it suits the text so well and compliments it and elevates it, so that's my favorite part.

I love how she has an aerial spread in the book of all the children once they've passed the tea around. And it's very interesting to me because when I was writing the manuscript, I was drawing diagrams, an aerial view of this circular table that Luli was sitting at and plotting out where each child was so that I could remember all their names in the right order. And so to have Hyewon actually replicate that without ever having seen my notebook is fascinating to me.

I hope that Luli and the Language of Tea, as well as all of my books, show that we have so much more in common than we actually realize. And that making friends is such a wonderful, fun activity, and we are all the much richer for it. I hope that this book inspires you to make new friends.

I'm going to read from the beginning of the book with permission from Holiday House.

The playroom was quiet. Luli couldn't speak English, neither could the others. All around the room, children played alone. Last time Luli had played by herself too until she had an idea. She'd drawn it for Miss Harikane. This time, Luli had a plan. From inside her backpack and onto the round table, Luli set a thermos, a canister, stacks of cup, and a fat bellied teapot. Out of the canister and into the teapot Luli dropped a small ball of tea leaves. Plop. Out of the thermos, and over the tea leaves, Luli poured steaming hot water.

Poosh. Luli took a deep breath. "Cha," she called in Chinese.