Dragonwings

Dragonwings is a children's historical novel by Laurence Yep, published by Harper & Row in 1975. It inaugurated the Golden Mountain Chronicles below) and it is the fifth chronicle in narrative sequence among ten published as of 2012. The book is used in school classrooms and has been adapted as a play under its original title.

Yep and Dragonwings won the Phoenix Award from the Children's Literature Association in 1995, recognizing the best children's book published twenty years earlier that did not win a major award. It had been a runner-up for the annual Newbery Medal.

Content

Dragonwings features Chinese American experience in the United States, specifically San Francisco, shortly after the turn of the twentieth century.

The protagonist is Moon Shadow Lee, or in the American order, Lee Moon Shadow. Moon Shadow grew up in China, having never seen his father, who had traveled to "The Golden Mountain" in America and worked hard in a family laundry which served the "demons" (Americans). When Moon Shadow is nine (eight in American calculation), a distant relative, Hand Clap, returns to China for a visit and when Hand Clap returns to the United States, Moon Shadow goes with him. Moon Shadow is soon reunited with his father and receives a few wonderful gifts from his father, uncle, and new friend. From his uncle he receives a pair of new black leather boots. From his new friend he receives some trousers and a shirt. Finally, he receives a beautiful kite from his father, for whom kite making is a specialty.