A children's picture book about Ah Bing, the Chinese orchard worker whose cherry variety gave Salem its "Cherry City" nickname, will represent Oregon at the 2026 National Book Festival in Washington, D.C.

The Oregon Center for the Book announced Wednesday, July 29, that it selected Bing's Cherries by Livia Blackburne, illustrated by Julia Kuo, alongside Lauren Kessler's Stubborn Twig: Three Generations in the Life of a Japanese American Family as the state's two Great Reads from Great Places for 2026. The selections were made in recognition of "America 250," the nation's semiquincentennial celebration.

Each year, the Library of Congress invites its state affiliates to choose titles representing their literary landscape at the festival.

Oregon's picks will sit alongside books from every other state and U.S. territory at the event on Saturday, Aug. 22, at the Walter E. Washington Convention Center.

Salem's cherry roots on a national stage

The connection runs deep.

Ah Bing, a Manchurian-born immigrant who arrived in Oregon around 1855, served as orchard foreman for horticulturist Seth Lewelling at a nursery in Milwaukie.

He supervised about 30 workers and tended several rows of experimental seedlings. The cherry variety bearing his name was developed around 1875 under his care.

Seth Lewelling said of the naming: "It's a big cherry, and Bing's big, and anyway it's in his row, so that shall be its name."

The Bing cherry became the most widely planted variety in the United States, according to the Oregon Encyclopedia. Salem earned the title "Cherry City of the World" in 1907 at the Pacific Coast Association of Nurserymen convention, and the city's cherry heritage dates to at least 1903, when the Salem Elks Lodge held the first Cherry Fair.

The books

Bing's Cherries, published March 10 by Knopf Books for Young Readers, frames Ah Bing's story as a modern American tall tale told through a girl and her father.

The Oregon Center for the Book described the picture book as weaving limited historical facts into a portrait of Ah Bing as a larger-than-life folk hero. Blackburne and Kuo are both Taiwanese American creators.

Stubborn Twig, first published in 1993 by Oregon State University Press, chronicles the Yasui family's journey from Japan to Hood River, where patriarch Masuo Yasui worked on railroads and in canneries before becoming a successful orchardist.

The book covers World War II and the internment of Japanese Americans in Oregon. It previously won an Oregon Book Award and was chosen for the statewide Oregon Reads program celebrating Oregon's 150th birthday.

Author Lauren Kessler directed the graduate program in literary nonfiction at the University of Oregon.

How to attend

The 2026 National Book Festival features more than 80 authors and runs from 9 a.m. to 8 p.m. on Aug. 22. Admission is free. Advance tickets are required for the first time in the festival's history, and all panels will be available to livestream.

Closer to home, Blackburne has scheduled Portland-area events for Bing's Cherries: a storytime and signing at White Rabbit Book Cafe in Oregon City on Saturday, Aug. 1, and another at Green Bean Books in Portland on Sunday, Aug. 2.