Chip Chip Dulang is a character based in San Francisco, right on the edge of Alta Plaza Park in Pacific Heights, which the book calls “the chippiest neighborhood in SF.”
Her creator is an author named Marguerite Imbert, who wrote a cultish cookbook in 2020 called Not a Cookbook which guides readers (including kids) to becoming their own kind of chef and even lets them write inside the book and create their own recipes.
“Chip Chip Dulang is a family reference,” Imbert explains, “created by my mom and her sisters, based on how they interpreted the sound of a cash register entering and registering a payment. With my mom, I’d use the phrase chip chip to mean ‘organized, on top of it, particular.’ Now I’m turning it into a character.”
If you think of how kids feel while they’re playing store, you’ll get a sense of this character’s core traits. Chip Chip is savvy, capable, ambitious and meticulous, with huge dreams, strong opinions, and serious responsibilities – like running the PTA (“at only six”) or communicating with the embassies in her neighborhood.
If Chip Chip does her job, Imbert explains, we’ll have more kids standing up for social justice and environmental protection, becoming unique and positive influences on the world. “I love writing for kids,” she says, “and I love my neighborhood. This book lets me marry the two. It only made sense that Chip Chip would live in San Francisco.”
Imbert wrote the book as a mother’s day card and is in the process of publishing it now. She has since written the follow-up to it as well, which is the origin story of Chip Chip, whose real name is “Genevieve Dulang,” how she was born and what happened.