The Year of the Dog

Well, I had great intentions of posting books as I read them, but until today I could not remember my username for this new account...EEEK! Too, too many usernames and passwords swirling in my head.

I read two books yesterday making for a wonderfully relaxing Saturday. The first,Year of the Dog by Grace Lin, is a very sweet nearly biographical year in the life of a young Taiwanese girl growing up in up state New York. When the book opens, we meet Grace--Pacy, her Chinese name--helping her family prepare for their Chinese new year celebration. They are welcoming the Year of the Dog. The reader travels with Pacy through the lunar calendar year as she searches for what she hopes will be her great talent and purpose.

SPOILER!!! Grace enters a national writer/illustrator contest with a story titled Ugly Vegetables and places 4th place. This is such a cool connection for young students to make with this book because years later, Grace Lin published that very book that she first conceived in elementary school!

Childhood memoirs can often be dark and cathartic for the writer, Year of the Dog does not have even a hint of "ax grinding." The author's notes state that she had a very happy childhood filled with much reading. However, she always wished there had been a character she could identify with in books and she wanted to write this book to give Chinese-American students a chance to see themselves in the text.
I would recommend this book to teachers looking for a good model of narrative story telling. Throughout the book Grace's mother tells stories that would serve as perfect examples of how students can take their own experiences and create a story.
I enjoyed reading this book and think it is a perfect book for students of all backgrounds from grades 3-6.