Dragonwings

Dragonwings is an award-winning children's novel written by Laurence Yep. The book won the IRA Children's Book Award and is a 1976 Newbery Honor Book. The book is used as educational material and has been made into a play.

Content

Inspired by the author's experience Dragonwings explores the inner life of a young boy growing up between two cultures by allowing readers into the boy's thoughts. In the book, Moon Shadow Lee travels to America from China in the early 20th century. He is brought to his father by their cousin. His father, Windrider, who lives in San Francisco after the father has earned the money for his passage by working in a family-owned laundry. Eventually the father takes a job as a janitor/repairman to be able to more freely study aeronautics in his spare time. Inspired by the Wright brothers and his belief that he was a dragon in his former life (having a human form is a punishment), Windrider builds a flying machine he calls Dragonwings, accounting for the book's title. All the money Windrider earns working goes into his airplane project, delaying a reunion with his wife, Moon Shadow's mother, who has remained behind in China waiting for the money needed for her trip to The Golden Mountain, their name for San Francisco. The great San Francisco earthquake of 1906 is among the interesting and exciting setbacks the father and son face. When Windrider finally has a short flight in 1909, crashes, and is injured, father and son agree that it is time to focus their resources on bringing the wife and mother to America. Told in first person by Moon Shadow, the novel is interesting and engaging on many levels and is appropriate for both middle grade readers and young adults. Yep spent six years researching Chinatown in the 1900s in order to accurately recreate it in the novel.^[1] Part of the story is based on an actual event that took place in 1909 involving a young Chinese flier.^[2]

Awards

• School Library Journal Best Book
• New York Times Outstanding Book of the Year
• Boston Globe–Horn Book Award Honor Book
• International Reading Association Children's Book Award
• Newbery Honor Book

Play

Dragonwings was adapted as a stageplay by the author in 1991, commissioned by Berkeley Repertory Theatre. It premiered as a school tour in the San Francisco Bay Area and was directed by Phyllis S.K. Look. The play was published by Dramatists Play Service in 1993.

References

1. ^ Cai, Mingshui (2003). Dana L. Fox and Kathy G. Short (eds.). ed. Stories Matter: The Complexity of Cultural Authenticity in Children's Literature. National Council of Teachers of English. pp. 172–178. ISBN 0-8141-4744-5. 
2. ^ Peterson, Linda Kauffman; Marilyn Leather Solt (1982). Newberry and Caldecott Medal and Honor Books: an annotated bibliography. Boston: G. K. Hall & Co.. pp. 207–208. ISBN 0-8161-8448-8. 

Source

• Harper Collins
• http://www.reading.ccsu.edu/TheDragonLode/DLVol182Sp2000/DLVol182Sp2000%2041-51.pdf
• Leimbach, Dulcie. "For Children." The New York Times. November 6, 1992. Online March 12, 2008.
• ALA Newbery Medal & Honor Books, 1922-Present.

External links

• Dragonwings play script on Dramatists Play Service
• Dragonwings study guide, themes, quotes, character analyses, literary devices, teaching resources