book talk with Sophie Chen Keller: Author of Little Wonder

I am so excited today to share this Q&A with Sophie Chen Keller, author of the beautiful book, Little Wonder, which was published under Jenna Bush Hager’s incredible publishing imprint, Thousand Voices (I love all their books)! Little Wonder is also Oprah’s 124th Book Club Pick (eee!!!).

Little Wonder is a soulful book that had me crying on the airplane (nothing new here) about a woman named Song and her son River. River is a gifted young pianist prodigy - a little wonder. Song and River are traveling to Beijing for a festival. In the chaos of the crowds on the busiest day of the year, they lose each other amongst the masses of people. What turns into a frantic days search, ends up as years separated. But both never lose the hope that they’ll find each other. The beauty of this book is Song’s determination. She never stops searching for her son, and any mother will be able to deeply relate. It’ll pull every single one of your heart strings!

I absolutely loved this Q&A! Sophie is so sweet and heartfelt. If Little Wonder wasn’t on your TBR, I’m POSITIVE that Sophie’s thoughtful answers will propel you to the library or bookstore!

I’ve always dreamed of being a writer. My love of books started with the bedtime stories my mom used to read to me every night, book after magical book. As soon as I could hold a pencil, I started writing short stories of my own, and when I was thirteen, I wrote a short story about a pedicab driver in rural China. That became my first publication, plucked out of the slush pile by the editors at Glimmer Train literary magazine.

Similarly, I started my musical journey at a young age. I was seven when my mom signed me up for group lessons at the library. I liked those lessons, and so my mom bought a used piano and found a private teacher. As I grew older, I got into the habit of practicing an hour and a half every day, and I won a local piano competition when I was in high school. That was as far as I could take it—I’m quite an ordinary pianist, and certainly not a prodigy like River!

In college, I drifted away from both music and writing. I majored in Economics and worked in corporate New York City after graduating. Then I met my husband, and as we spoke of our plans for the future, we gave each other the courage to reach for our dreams. Right before our wedding, we both left our jobs; he went back to graduate school and I started writing what became my first book, The Luster of Lost Things.

I have also, in recent years, found my way back to the piano, slowly relearning some of my old pieces for fun, and that has been a lovely thing, especially when I catch my son absent-mindedly humming Liszt’s Hungarian Rhapsody Number 6, or my daughter dancing along as I play Chopin’s Black Keys etude.

After I became a mom, I realized the most naturally propulsive thing in the world is a mother separated from her children, trying to find her way back to them. The idea specifically of a mother who becomes a food delivery worker in order to find her missing child came later, after we moved to Beijing. As I took long walks with my son (he napped best in a moving stroller), I couldn’t help but notice how many delivery workers there were on the streets—package delivery workers, grocery delivery workers and, of course, food delivery workers. The food delivery workers often wore bright yellow uniforms and would rush past me carrying their orders, and I found myself wondering if they had made their delivery on time. I wondered where they had come from and I wondered what their lives were like, and that was how Song came to be.

Growing up, I spent many summers in Northeastern China with my relatives. Each time I returned, I saw a different version of China—dirt alleys replaced by landscaped and paved roads, bicycles replaced by scooters and cars, single-story homes replaced by high-rises—and in writing Little Wonder, I wanted to capture those leaps in development.

When I moved to Beijing as an adult, I found yet another version of China. The city was so beautiful and modern; at the same time, the air pollution was often so heavy that you could see it, like fog. It was a city of the very wealthy, yet also a city of the very poor. And regardless of socioeconomic status, people lived technologically advanced lives. Every transaction was made by scanning a QR code. I found inspiration all around me, and I wanted to capture the vibrance and the particularities of life there.

China’s population is over four times that of the US’s. That’s a big difference! It shapes daily life and the competition for resources and peoples’ values and attitudes. It’s part of the reason Song can’t find River at the train station, and it’s why she can’t find him later on Chinese social media platforms. You can imagine, in the US, typing someone’s name into Facebook and sifting through a tidy list of results. But in China, there are far more users, and usernames aren’t actual names. To find someone, you need their QR code or phone number, or you might find them through shared social groups. But as we see in Little Wonder, Song and River end up carving out lives in two very different, parallel worlds.

When I started writing this book, I was just emerging from the trenches of early motherhood. For two years, I’d barely slept or taken time for myself—to take an unrushed shower, to eat a meal sitting down, to finish a cup of coffee. But once my son started daycare, I had an unbroken stretch of hours every day, and that’s when I started writing again, and the thing I most wanted to write about was motherhood. About the physical reality of those first weeks—there is a scene in the book, for example, where Song is eating lunch, and leaks breastmilk onto her shirt—and about the tenderness and toil of those first years, and about a love that can burn through anything, whether it be time or distance or uncertainty or fear or even death. As with much of my writing and my characters, Song is a blend of what I imagine and what I observe and what I know. I can see so much of my own mom’s ferocity, determination and playful spirit in her.

Song’s life is a hard one, and the situation she finds herself in—separated from her child—is every parent’s nightmare. But Little Wonder is a story of hope and love. It’s filled with light, from the wonder of a child to the generosity of a stranger. I think such acts of kindness are an everyday form of magic, something small we can do that can have a real impact on someone’s life, even change it. In a world that seems increasingly out of control, it is more important than ever to remember that we still have agency over our choices, and we can choose to approach each other with that spirit of openness and kindness.

I simply like food! The Luster of Lost Things features a magical bakery, which gave me the opportunity to spend entire scenes dwelling on sweet confections. Food is an important part of Chinese culture—so much so that instead of saying hello to your neighbors, you ask them if they’ve eaten yet—and there is so much good food in Beijing and in the Northeast, that I couldn’t help seizing the opportunity in Little Wonder to conjure my favorite dishes in mouthwatering detail.

I was born in rural Northeastern China. My great-grandparents were farmers and fishermen; my grandparents were teachers and technicians; my aunts and uncles were food cart vendors and taxi drivers. They are ordinary, hard-working people and yet so few stories are written about people like them. So I wrote this story to honor them, and I hope that readers will love getting to know them and continue to remember them long after the story is over.

I am amazed, overjoyed, grateful…all of it, beyond words. Especially because it has been a long climb to this point! The Luster of Lost Things came out nearly a decade ago, and since then I have heard “no” many times, and I’ve spent five years writing and rewriting (and rewriting some more) Little Wonder. But along the way, Song and River have found people who embraced them, guided them, and believed fiercely in them. My deepest thanks—it has been a dream come true.

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Little Wonder was published on June 16, 2026 and is on sale now! You can learn more about Sophie’s writing on her website or follow her on Instagram.

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