The Jade Dragon
Grade 3-4–A well-executed easy chapter book that incorporates a friendship story with the more serious issue of identity. It is 1983, and Ginny Liao is the only Chinese second grader in her suburban Virginia school. She has friends among her classmates, but no best friend. Then a new girl, Stephanie, enters her class, and Ginny immediately hopes they will be friends because Stephanie is Chinese, too. That doesn't prove to be the case. While Ginny is an American born of native Chinese parents, Stephanie was adopted by a Caucasian family and is thoroughly Americanized. In order to help the friendship along, Ginny loans Stephanie the jade dragon her parents had made to commemorate her birth in the Year of the Dragon. Almost at once she knows she has made a mistake, but cannot correct it and is fearful her mother will discover what she has done. Meanwhile, the two girls finally become friends and discover that they both have secret feelings about being Chinese. The push/pull between American and ethnic culture, a dilemma that many children of immigrants feel, is well illustrated in this novel. Ginny is a real little girl who doesn't want to be different, but at the same time values her parents and their culture. A first-rate purchase.–Terrie Dorio, Santa Monica Public Library, CACopyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.