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Nancy Keane's | Booktalks -- Quick and Simple | |
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Lin,
Grace.
WHERE THE MOUNTAIN MEETS THE MOON Boston : Little, Brown Books for Young Readers, 2009 IL 3-6, RL 5.5 ISBN 0316114278 |
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"Tell me again, Ba" Minli begged. "Please."
"Okay" he said, and as he set down his chopsticks his smile twinkled in a way that Minli loved. This quote reflects the interest children will have in this Chinese storybook by Grace Lin. Grace Lin has taken a number of traditional Chinese folktales and has in her words "created histories for mythical characters, and pictured a Chinese girl free of real life limitations as a spiritual heroine." Just as Minli is fascinated by the stories of her father, so to will children be fascinated by her adventures. Minli is a very poor young Chinese girl. She purchases a goldfish for her family's "good fortune" with the little bit of money she has. Unfortunately, even the few grains of rice needed to feed the fish are too much for her family to bear. She therefore sets him free. As a reward, the goldfish tells her how to find the source of her father's stories, the Never-Ending Mountain. Along the way, Minli encounters a series of adventures, each of which is a story within a story. Eventually she meets the Old Man of the Moon and changes her family's fortunes forever. This is an ideal book to read aloud in the folktale tradition. It will create memories that will be passed on from generation to generation. (Terry W. Oesau, terryoesau@aol.com, teacher) |
| SUBJECTS:
Fairy tales.
Dragons -- Fiction. Moon -- Fiction. |
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