Chicken Soup & Goji Berries

The kids of the Yang family have spent most of their lives in Canada. Having their Nainai from China move in with the family is a big change for them. From having to turn down the volume of their cartoons, to being awakened by the soy milk machine at 7 AM, Jeannie, Ethan, and Cindy have much to get used to. But it’s not just the day-to-day routine that’s changed now that Nainai is in their lives -- there’s something different in the air, something magical. Chicken Soup and Goji Berries is a graphic novel by Naomi Cui and Janice Liu exploring the connections across languages, cultures, and generations that can exist within one Chinese-Canadian family. Utilizing some of the unique tool set available in the comics medium, the story code-switches fluidly between English and Chinese, while preserving understanding for readers of both languages. You can read it in English, you can read it in Chinese, or you can feel like a member of the Yang family and read it in both.

Janice Liu is a children’s comics creator. She is the co-creator of Chicken Soup & Goji Berries, a Cloudscape-published bilingual graphic novel about a Chinese-Canadian family. Her all-ages comics use fantasy and the supernatural to explore loss, desire, and Chinese diasporic identity. Janice is the owner at Young Artists’ Place in Burnaby, BC, where she teaches art classes for kids and teens. She is also a Creative Writing instructor at Place des Arts. Janice is available for art & comics workshops, as well as

Naomi is a translator, programmer, creator, and linguistic consultant based in Toronto, Canada. She is interested in art, language and technology as a media for communication and self-expression. She uses her background in computer science and linguistics to collaborate with artists and writers or otherwise help them with their work.
She is the author of bilingual children’s graphic novel Chicken Soup & Goji Berries with illustrator Janice Liu.