Book Review: The Truth About Dragons
Julie Leung's picture book holds a powerful message for bicultural families
Happy Friday! The Swan Feather is now from Asian Mom, a lifestyle publication about women’s issues from the Asian Mom’s perspective.
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For now, I’m aiming to publish from Asian Mom twice a week. On Mondays I’ll share researched and reported pieces about women’s reproductive health and on Fridays I’ll share pieces about the cultural touches we bring to family life. Sometimes this will be a book or film review, other times it will be a personal essay. I’d love to do more interviews and run guest essays. If you’d like to write something for from Asian Mom or know someone who should, please reach out to jenhyde@substack.com!
Today, I’m excited to tell you about a book we’ve been loving in our house: The Truth About Dragons by award-winning writer, Julie Leung. The book received a Caldecott honor this year as well!
Julie and I are acquaintances from my Brooklyn days. She’s a book marketer and the author of four books for children including The Mice of the Round Table series, which is a chapter book for kids who love fantasy. Though Julie got her start in fantasy, her recent titles have been nonfiction. Prior to publishing The Truth About Dragons, which is her fifth title, she wrote three picture books about Chinese American history for kids ages 5-10 including the story of Tyrus Wong who is responsible for the Disney movie Bambi and Hazel Ying Li, the first Chinese American pilot to fly for the US military. In recent years, Julie has taken on memoir in her picture books.
The Truth About Dragons is the tale of a young boy who must go on a quest to discovery two different origin stories about Dragon mythology. His journeys take him to two distinct forests: a western European forest, and a Chinese forest, and to an Asian and then a white grandmother who share what they know about dragons with him. The story is a modern-day fable about bicultural heritage, and the truth about dragons as we discover is that their are at least two origin stories for bicultural and multiracial people, and that these stories of our origin belong to us in equal measure.
If you’re an Asian Mom in a mixed race home, this is a story you’ll want to read with your kids. It’s also a great book for starting conversations about diversity with your children as well as for sparking conversation about your own origin stories. Race, after all is a social construct. Our ethnic backgrounds and our heritage is rich with variation that whiteness has attempted to erase.
You can get a copy of The Truth About Dragons here.
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