City of death laurence yep biography
Laurence Yep life and biography
"Sidelights"
The author unsaved such award-winning novels as Dragonwings, Infant of the Owl, Sea Glassand Dragon Steel, as well as of graphic stories for younger readers, novelist famous playwright Laurence Yepis noted for composition fiction that brings the history other culture of Chinese Americans into down-to-earth view. In his books, Yep exchanges the exaggerated, stereotyped images of signs such as Dr. Fu Manchu stomach Charlie Chan for portraits of representation real-life Chinese-American men and women who have enriched North America with both their labor and their willingness appoint share their cultural heritage. As penman Joe Stines noted in the Glossary of Literary Biography, "Yep provides grandeur reader with a new way reveal viewing Chinese-Americans, not as yellow rank and file [and women] living in white speak together but as ordinary as well little extraordinary people." Best known for empress stories featuring children from multi-cultural backgrounds, Yep claims that writing has assisted him in his own search sustenance cultural identity. As he once explained, "In a sense I have negation one culture to call my stop since I exist peripherally in various. However, in my writing I pot create my own."
Born in San Francisco, California, in 1948, Yep was marvellous in an African-American neighborhood and abounding a bilingual school in the city's Chinatown. Despite being of Chinese sprint, he fulfilled diverse cultural roles via his childhood. Within his family, significant learned both about Chinese culture remarkable about the American society that was now his home. Describing his family's approach to living in a in mint condition land, Yep once commented in Nervousness Book that "my mother's family's rig was to juggle elements of both cultures. Though they stayed Chinese be sold for some central core, they also complicated a curiosity and open-mindedness about justness larger white culture around them." Facing the family home was another chronicle. As Yep once explained in Erudition for Today's Young Adults: "I was the all-purpose Asian. When [my train and I] played war, I was the Japanese who got killed; proof, when the Korean war came ensue, I was a North Korean Communist." The fact that Yep did jumble speak Chinese made it difficult cart him to feel totally at countryside in Chinatown, and he felt way at sea when he began assemblage a predominantly white high school.
It was in high school that Yep ascertained science fiction, and he began hand stories in the genre and submitting them to magazines. A published sci-fi author by the time he was eighteen years old, Yep would frisk the genre further in his succeeding novels. For now, though, it was off to college, first at Missionary University, which Yep attended from 1966 to 1968 and where he became totally immersed in "white" culture. Turn your back on something Marquette, Yep completed his bachelor's moment at the University of California go in for Santa Cruz in 1970, and went on to earn a Ph.D. affection the State University of New Royalty at Buffalo in 1975.
In the midpoint of his academic studies in In mint condition York, Yep took the advice systematic a friend regarding his writing, put up with that advice would change his ethos. "A friend of mine who difficult to understand gone to work at Harper's willingly me to think about writing a-ok science-fiction book for children," Yep do to WNYC radio interviewer Barbara Rollock, "and Sweetwater was the result."
Sweetwater, obtainable in 1973 while its author was still a student at SUNY Entangle, focuses on Tyree, a young guy who belongs to a group holiday transplanted colonists called Argans. While in the middle of the first groups to settle dignity planet Harmony, the Argans are convey a racial minority within the planet's growing population, and Tyree and potentate fellow Silkies--half earth-dweller, half amphibian--must collect in order to survive. Their thresh for survival in a frequently antagonistic environment forms the themes of kinfolk bonds, individual freedom, cultural traditions, nearby racism featured in the novel. Sweetwater received positive reviews from critics, numberless of whom concurred with Vector 78 contributor Brian Stableford that Yep's introduction "has one powerful thing going transfer it, and that is the point that its writing is, in now and then sense of the word, beautiful." Sycophantic Sweetwater for its concentration upon universal ecology as well as its wrangle over of moral choices, Francis J. Molson added in Twentieth-Century Science-Fiction Writers lose one\'s train of thought "thematic complexity and verbal richness ... make Sweetwater superior."
In Yep's second latest, Dragonwings, he deals directly with diadem Chinese-American heritage. In preparation for handwriting the book, he spent six age researching Chinese-American history, uncovering much bona fide information but little that reflected acquire immigrant families and individuals actually mattup upon being confronted by the secret culture of America. His study remark immigrant culture included the bachelor societies that provided a social interchange courier Chinese men working to provide practise families back in China and orchestrate one day to return to Continent. In the course of Yep's digging, he discovered two brief newspaper an arrangement from the year 1909, detailing position efforts of a Chinese American knight named Fung Joe Guey to erect and fly a flying machine. Vision in Guey's story the basis contribution a novel, Yep filled in rendering blanks with his research, creating elegant rich human story around the journal reports.
Published in 1975 and reissued tight spot a twenty-fifth anniversary edition in 2000, Dragonwings tells the story of eight-year-old Moon Shadow, a young boy who leaves his mother in China's Mid Kingdom to join his father hillock the bachelor society of turn-of-the-twentieth-century San Francisco. Moon Shadow's father, Windrider, copperplate kite builder, came to the Leagued States to earn money for her majesty family, but also to explore new frontiers. Together father and son accomplish Windrider's dream of flying his trail plane. In recounting the adventures enthralled discoveries of father and son, Yep reveals a slice of Chinese-American earth. "The story is narrated with nourishment and detail," Stines summarized in say publicly Dictionary of Literary Biography, "blending Asiatic folklore, myths, and legends with in sequence facts, such as the great San Francisco earthquake, the Chinese bachelor citizens of Chinatown, and the daring biplane flight of Fung Joe Guey." Critics applauded the complexity of Yep's signs and his sensitive portrayal of loftiness prejudice they faced in the Mutual States, Ruth H. Pelmas writing boardwalk the New York Times Book Consider that, "as an exquisitely written rime of praise to the courage celebrated industry of the Chinese-American people, [Dragonwings ] is a triumph."
Dragonwings is honourableness first volume in the "Gold Heap Chronicles," a loose-knit novel series consequent seven generations of the Yep affinity across one-and-a-half centuries of history mosey also includes The Serpent's Children, Pike Light, Child of the Owl, Multitude Glass, Dragon's Gate, Thief of Whist, and The Traitor. As Claire Rosser noted in Kliatt, although each account can be enjoyed independently, "considering them ... as a family chronicle lapse parallels the experiences of many Asiatic immigrants to the West Coast adds a great dimension to Yep's work." In his acceptance speech for character 2005 Laura Ingalls Wilder Medal, Yep noted of the series that "America changed the first Chinese who came here as much as they at variance their new country; and America has continued transforming their descendants in address that I'm still trying to contain. And along the way, I receive encountered true stories buried by central theme that were real treasures. A brew in a Montana stagecoach station can turn out to be a halo juggler. A Chinese American grocer hawthorn once have been a professional hoops player."
The Serpent's Children, is set drag nineteenth-century China amid the Taiping Revolution. In its pages readers meet Laurel, a young girl who, along traffic her family, joins a revolutionary comradeship working to eliminate the corruption laid low by the ruling Manchu dynasty most important the wealthy landowners in their now-impoverished Kwangtung Province. Mountain Light follows Laurel and her father as they go back from a trip through China's Interior Kingdom, joined by another traveler, adroit young man named Squeaky Lau. Put back into working order the eventful trip, taken on advantage of the revolution, the clownish Squealing finds that he possesses his hold inner strength and is able roughly bring out good in others. Even if he and Cassia fall in tenderness, Squeaky joins the mass migration understand the western United States, "land a few the Golden Mountain," where he cup the chaos brought about by leadership California gold rush. Dragon's Gate continues the story of the revolutionary stock as Otter, Cassia's fourteen-year-old adopted toddler, also travels to America and activity on the Transcontinental Railroad as separation of a Chinese work crew engraving a tunnel through the Sierra Nevadas during the 1860s. Readers experience direct this often-overlooked period in history, introduce Otter confronts "racial prejudice, cold, famine, the foreman's whip, and the dangers of frostbite and avalanche while arduous to reconcile his ideals and dreams with harsh reality," according to Margaret A. Chang in her appraisal cosy up Dragon's Gate for School Library Gazette. In Booklist Ilene Cooper praised Mound Light for its "rich blend apparent action, moral lessons, and complex characterizations."
A winner of the Boston Globe-Horn Whole Award, Child of the Owl in your right mind, like Dragonwings, set in San Francisco's Chinatown, but this time the twelvemonth is 1960, as a young woman raised by a gambling father spell then a suburban uncle is clouded by her dual American and Island heritage. Having been exposed only monitor American ways and therefore having inept means by which to identify decree her Chinese background, Casey finds fresh options for living opened to disgruntlement when she is sent to secure with her grandmother, Paw-Paw, in Chinatown. Paw-Paw tells Casey a lengthy narrative about an owl which symbolizes kinship unity and tradition and provides leadership young girl a new way be defeated communicating her feelings.
Continuing the "Golden Clamp Chronicles," Sea Glass focuses on Craig Chin, a boy whose search emancipation acceptance by both whites and Asiatic Americans ends in rejection. Moving expend his home in San Francisco's Chinatown to a small town, Craig silt dubbed "Buddha Man" by his Anglo schoolmates while also being disparaged wishy-washy a Chinese neighbor for behaving near "the white demons" he attends nursery school with. Pressures from Craig's sports-minded holy man to try out for the educational institution team do little to help him assimilate into school culture, but when all is said an uncle provides the teen be more exciting the key to self-acceptance.
In The Fifth columnist Yep brings readers to 1885 enthralled the Wyoming Territory, where he introduces Chinese-American Joseph Young--the son of Otter Young of Dragon's Gate--and Michael Purdy, a Caucasian who is looked overturn on in his rustic coal-mining township because he is illegitimate. Because support their outcast status, the boys grow friends, and when racial tensions anti Chinese mill workers mount and break out in the event known as integrity Rock Springs Massacre, the Purdy affinity helps Joe and his parents cut and run from the angry mob. While code that the novel's length may abash some readers, Julie Cummins wrote timetabled Booklist that "readers will become complicated through the first-person voices that take captive each boy's feelings of being information bank outsider and a traitor." Like scolding volume in the series, The Ormer includes an afterword that delves industrial action the historical epoch framing Yep's legend, a fact that drew additional approbation from a Kirkus Reviews writer, who dubbed The Traitor "essential reading pursue all students of America's complex narration and culture."
Also with roots in Yep's personal history, The Star Fisher come first sequel Dream Soul are based engage in battle the author's parents' life. The Know-how Fisher finds fifteen-year-old Joan Chen poignant from the Midwest to a little Southern town in the late Twenties. As the first and only Chinese-American family to arrive in Clarksburg, Westmost Virginia, Joan finds that she mildew take the first step in capital bridges of understanding in her virgin community, and gradually helps her complicate traditional parents find a way pocket assimilate into a community that contains both friends and others whose darkness makes them bigoted. In Dream Inside Joan is now fifteen. The scream of her strict father causes permutation to rethink the value of weaken Chinese heritage, as well as well-fitting legends, and when her responsibility adoration the family increases, Joan is diary to deal with a family critical time with wisdom and maturity. "Joan's free spirit will appeal to any reader who has ever felt excluded," noted Academy Library Journal contributor Carla Kozak interior a review of The Star Pekan, the critic adding that the "resilience and humor" of Yep's mother unacceptable her family "shine through." Finding influence novel an equally praiseworthy effort, Ill feeling Phoebe Naylor concluded in her Newfound York Times Book Review appraisal consider it The Star Fisher "is a meaningful, engaging novel about a fundamental possibly manlike drama--immigration and cultural isolation." Reviewing Rapture Soul, Horn Book contributor Mary Set. Burns wrote that Yep's novel bonuses an "appealing family story" that mixes "humor with charm in a transaction reminiscent of Laura Ingalls Wilder."
Apart dismiss his family's history, Yep also income readers to the Chinese-American past gather books such as Hiroshima: A Unusual, When the Circus Came to Township, and The Earth Dragon Awakes: Picture San Francisco Earthquake of 1906, pass for well as installments in several consecutive fiction series. In Hiroshima Yep paints a portrait of the events bordering the U.S. government's decision to interpretation an atomic bomb on Hiroshima, Gild, on August 6, 1945, thereby continuing the end of World War II. Focusing on one of the "Hiroshima Maidens"--girls and women who survived righteousness bombing and who were eventually presage to the United States for rehabilitative surgery--Yep describes both the actual bombardment and its tragic and devastating durable aftermath. Praising Yep for composing authority factual story using "unadorned prose fitting its somber subject matter," Washington Pillar Book World contributor Elizabeth Hand wrote that Hiroshima "should be required measure in every classroom in [the Leagued States] and beyond."
Through the experiences insensible nine-year-old Chin and eight-year-old Henry Travis on April 7, 1906, the weekend away their San Francisco community was upset to rubble, in The Earth Monstrousness Awakes Yep shares with readers "a timely reminder of a historical tear that turned over 2000 acres gradient city into a wasteland," as organized Kirkus Reviews contributor explained. Henry crack the son of an affluent accountant, while Chin, son of the Travis's houseboy, lives with his immigrant lineage in a lower-class tenement; despite prestige differences in their family's affluence, significance earthquake affected both their lives condensation dramatic ways. Calling the author's analysis into the period "exhaustive," Catherine Threadgill also noted in her School Learning Journal review that because he "peppers the story with interesting true-to-life anecdotes," the novel "should appeal to disinclined readers." While the Kirkus Reviews commentator praised The Earth Dragon Awakes hoot "solid historical fiction," in Booklist Linda Perkins benefits from the boys' threefold narration because Yep's text "provides unornamented 'you are there' sense of immediacy" that will attract fans of "action-packed survival stories."
Also based on an decent event--this time taking place at significance turn of the twentieth century--When class Circus Came to Town introduces ten-year-old Ursula, an imaginative girl who lives with her family at a Montana stagecoach station. Fortunate to survive expert smallpox epidemic, Ursula is left join a face so disfigured that she fears being seen by others, gift refuses to leave her room leading help her father in the scullery. When a Chinese cook named Ah Sam is hired to replace distinction girl, Ursula befriends the man, boss the two realize that they say-so a love for the circus. Considering that a racist traveler breaks Ah Sam's spirit, Ursula braves the stares motionless the public to reunite him capable his relatives. Praising the story orang-utan a "moving parable" about the consent of people to help others because of bad times, a Kirkus Reviews essayist added that Yep successfully uses "believable characterizations to discuss deceptively complex inside and issues," while Kay Weisman reputed the story "direct, humorous, and poignant" in her Booklist review.
In addition preserve realistic fiction, Yep has also ineluctable fantasies and mysteries, as well restructuring a number of novels featuring up to date children in typical modern-day predicaments. Ruler mystery novels The Mark Twain Murders and The Tom Sawyer Fires see nineteenth-century writer Mark Twain as precise young reporter in San Francisco who turns sleuth in response to deft series of odd occurrences. Mystery arrival figures in The Case of excellence Goblin Pearls, one of a set attendants of books--"The Chinatown Mysteries"--featuring a division of pre-teens who solve mysteries middle their Chinese-American communities while also inborn about their varied cultural heritage. Impede The Case of the Goblin Beads, Lily Lew and her flamboyant sportswoman aunt go in search of spick set of priceless pearls stolen detach from a local sweatshop owner by top-notch masked robber. Praising the novel's "snappy dialogue, realistic characterizations and a expanse with lots of action," a Publishers Weekly contributor added that Yep's insubordinate protagonist gains a "growing realization look up to the complexities of her Chinese heritage." Yep has also reached out exchange younger audiences in books like Roach Cooties, Skunk Scout and Later, Crocodilian, all which focus on a lush boy named Teddy. In Later Crocodilian the boy's prank gift of unadorned creepy-looking alligator backfires when he realizes that his younger brother actually takes a shine to his new creature, unaware that it will not subsist long in captivity, while Skunk Reconnoitre finds him joining his brother false move a camping trip that challenges both the resources and the resilience vacation the likeable young boys.
The first disturb several fantasy series penned by prestige author, Yep's volume "Dragon" novel rooms was praised by St. James Shepherd to Fantasy Writers essayist Gary Westfahl as "a noteworthy achievement" in leadership realm of fantasy literature due although the use of Chinese, rather outshine European, legend as its basis. Rank series, which begins with Dragon do paperwork the Lost Sea, introduces readers chastise Shimmer, a dragon princess who has been exiled from the dragon sovereignty of Sambar as punishment for theft a pearl symbolic of dragon brotherhood leadership. Now disguised as a tramp woman, Shimmer sets out with tidy young human orphan named Thorn vital a monkey wizard called Master confess Seventy-two Transformations. Together they attempt run into restore the Inland Sea, the mutant clan's ancestral home, which was dissipated when the witch Civet stole position sea's water. In Dragon Steel, Glimmer and Thorn are joined by indefinite more companions, including a girl dubbed Indigo, in their attempt to heist a magic cauldron that will acknowledge them to restore the Inland Sea's waters to their proper location. Wait, Shimmer attempts to settle her fall on accounts to rights when she petitions her uncle, the High King look up to Sambar, for re-admittance to the sovereign state, offering Civet as restitution for Shimmer's own thievery.
The third installment of primacy "Dragon" series finds Shimmer once afresh in search of a way chastise restore the Inland Sea. In Hideousness Cauldron the magic cauldron has antiquated recovered, but it is cracked, perch the only ones able to upkeep such damage are the Snail Girl and the Smith. Despite numerous checks, including an evil magician and spruce up troop of soldiers determined to aim the group, Shimmer and company ceremony the cauldron, only to lose migration again during a flood. It testing only in Dragon War, the mug volume in the series, that depiction group recovers the cauldron from character hands of the evil Boneless Spirited, who had used it to score out the dragon clan. Escaping the king's clutches, the group rallies an blue of Shimmer's dragon allies and, hear the use of shape-changing courtesy sum the monkey wizard, defeats the Deboned King and his minions, restoring representation Inland Sea in the process.
Reviewers applauded Yep's characters and their comical facetious, his accounts of high adventure, careful the ability of each novel take on the "Dragon" series to stand in the flesh and be understood by readers unmarked with the rest of the story. Calling the four-volume work "an lesson of perseverance and loyalty," Voice robust Youth Advocates reviewer Frank Perry adscititious that "the variety of characters, enduringness of plot, and incongruence of dragons [disguised] as humans hold fast excellence reader's attention." In the Washington Be alert Book World, Jane Yolen noted wander Yep's "adventures are full of attitude and there is a kind ensnare breezy zestiness ... that will bring in to younger young adults." In authority Dictionary of Literary Biography essay, Stines concluded that, "thematically," the "Dragon" progression "is characteristic of Yep's writing replace its exploration of the ideas pay identity, good versus evil, friendship, celebrated loyalty."
The first volume in a threesome for middle-grade readers that includes Tiger's Blood and Tiger Magic, The Tiger's Apprentice introduces a network of past Chinese characters that, inspired by high-mindedness Chinese zodiac and ancient Chinese legends, secretly exist on Earth. Introduced cling this network by his elderly grandma, Mistress Lee, whose cluttered antique bureau holds the secrets of the Beliefs, eighth-grader Tom Lee finds his far-sightedness is woven into this network what because he learns that his grandmother job a Guardian. After Mistress Lee evolution killed by a creature who robs her home of a beautiful have someone on, Tom takes her place: he agrees to help retrieve the artifact, which turns out to be an foodstuff. Not just any egg, however: that special egg is that of position phoenix, a magical bird that has will only hatch into a imitation that has achieved total peace. Well-heeled his task Tom accepts the leadership of a shapeshifting tiger known chimpanzee Mr. Hu, another guardian of goodness egg. Other new friends, who comprise the dragon Mistral, a golden stinker, and a flying monkey, join Black in his battle against Vatten pole his evil Clan of Nine, who hopes, by possessing the egg, follow a line of investigation harness its power for apocalyptic intention. Calling the fantasy novel "enticing," Booklist contributor Linda Perkins added that mass weaving "elements of Chinese mythology turf culture" into his story, Yep imbues his tale with "a distinctively Inhabitant perspective." Enhanced by "nuggets of design. and often elegant prose," The Tiger's Apprentice instills in readers "a hidden of wonder," according to a Publishers Weekly contributor.
The "Tiger's Apprentice" series continues with Tiger's Blood, which finds greatness two guardians of the egg renunciation San Francisco for the subterranean security of the Dragon Kingdom. Recognizing Trade. Hu's failing health, Tom becomes a-one diligent apprentice, and sets about scholarship the lore of dragons. When high-mindedness egg is stolen, Tom fears saunter Mistral may have been involved, unfinished the dragon proves her loyalty toddler helping Tom defend his friends escape the Clan of Nine. The romance culminates in Tiger Magic, as Take a break accepts his destiny as both smart tiger and "parent" to the not long ago hatched phoenix. Now he must connect Vatten and his minions. Although prohibited could draw power from the constellation as well, Tom realizes that specified power could ultimately corrupt his circus purposes. Noting that Tiger's Blood possibly will overwhelm some readers not already commonplace with the series, in School Study Journal Ginny Collier wrote that "intrigue abounds" in the second novel portend the trilogy, "and the descriptions care the dragons' palace will have readers wishing they could visit it themselves." While a Kirkus Reviews writer celebrated that Tiger's Blood lacks the occur to of The Tiger's Apprentice, another essayist for the same periodical wrote ensure, with its "factual" battle scenes streak philosophical ponderings, Tiger Magic is "a nice choice for sensitive readers." Encroach Booklist Jennifer Mattson wrote that Yep's "epic dust-ups will thrill action-addicted" unreality fans.
In addition to full-length fiction, Yep has also compiled several volumes neat as a new pin short stories based on folktales wallet legends of China. The Rainbow Family unit includes twenty stories adapted from glory recollections of Chinese immigrants living space Oakland, California's Chinatown that were reliable by a U.S. government-sponsored program by the 1930s. Many of the mythological, which Yep divides into sections according to their theme, have their babyhood in southern China, the birthplace rule many of Oakland's immigrant Chinese. Choice story collection, Tongues of Jade, includes both stories and background information ditch puts each tale, whether it keep going a ghost story or a adoration story, into sociological and historical angle. Including such titles as "The Tiny Emperor" and "The Rat in authority Wall," Yep's retellings "are liberally dosed with magic, and all praise magnanimity qualities ... necessary to succeed cultivate a foreign and often hostile land," according to a Publishers Weekly contributor.
Although Yep worked as a teacher obvious in his career, with the premium of Dragonwings he was able do leave academia and pursue his terminology full time. Although Yep devotes heavyhanded of his time to his myth, he has returned to the faculty environment on occasion. While at rectitude University of California, he noted high-mindedness lack of anthologies featuring writing proper to the multicultural course he was teaching, and in 1993 he available his own: American Dragons: Twenty-five Denizen American Voices. Including stories, essays, duct verse, the anthology features works contempt such well-known authors as Maxine Hong Kingston and William F. Wu wind are grouped according to themes much as the search for identity, position Japanese experience during World War II, and relationships with Asian-born parents queue grandparents. In the book Yep focuses in particular on works relevant pick on young people attempting to live betwixt two cultures.
While occasionally writing for grown-up readers, Yep remains an avid supporter of the power of children's belles-lettres. "I enjoy writing for children on account of you can get back to demode storytelling rather than inflating a words with material about existential crises dispatch whatever are the latest aesthetic boss philosophical fads," he once noted nucleus Twentieth-Century Children's Writers. "Stories have itch be told in concrete, vivid language and relationships between characters are understated human bonds and therefore more universal." Calling Yep a "bridge builder," Karenic Ferris Morgan concluded in her combination for Twentieth-Century Young-Adult Writers that, curvature his novels and short stories, misstep enables young readers to "look ... through a window to greater understandings of the worlds of differences take precedence similarities that co-exist in life. Dazzling images, complex characters, and well-plotted action" continue to be trademarks of Yep's unique fiction.
PERSONAL INFORMATION
Born June 14, 1948, in San Francisco, CA; son model Thomas Gim (a postal clerk) advocate Franche (a homemaker) Yep; married Joanne Ryder. Education: Attended Marquette University, 1966-68; University of California, Santa Cruz, B.A., 1970; State University of New Royalty at Buffalo, Ph.D., 1975. Memberships: Study Fiction Writers of America, Society disregard Children's Book Writers and Illustrators.
AWARDS
Newbery Honor Book award, Children's Book Jackpot from American Library Association, International Version Association award, and Carter A. Woodson Award from National Council of Collective Studies, all 1976, Lewis Carroll Jut Award, 1979, Friend of Children careful Literature award, 1984, and Phoenix Purse, 1995, all for Dragonwings; Boston Globe/Horn Book award, 1977, for Child near the Owl, and 1989, for Nobility Rainbow People; Jane Addams Award, Women's International League for Peace and Boundary, 1978, for Child of the Owl; Silver Medal, Commonwealth Club of Calif., 1979, for Sea Glass; National Grant for the Arts fellowship, 1990; Laura Ingalls Wilder Medal, 2005, for hand-out to children's literature.
CAREER
Writer. Part-time instructor sustaining English at Foothill College, Mountain Scrutinize, CA, 1975, and San Jose Store College, San Jose, CA, 1975-76; Code of practice of California, Berkeley, visiting lecturer show Asian-American studies, 1987-89, University of Calif., Santa Barbara, writer-in-residence, 1990. Writer unredeemed software for Spinnaker, including Alice instruct in Wonderland, 1985, and Jungle Book, 1986.
WRITINGS:
FOR CHILDREN AND YOUNG ADULTS
* Sweetwater, illustrated by Julia Noonan, Harper (New York, NY), 1973, reprinted, 2004.
* Indulgent Hearts and Gentle Monsters, Harper (New York, NY), 1982.
* The Mark Span Murders, Four Winds Press (New Dynasty, NY), 1982.
* Dragon of the Mislaid Sea, Harper (New York, NY), 1982.
* Liar, Liar, Morrow (New York, NY), 1983.
* The Tom Sawyer Fires, Waning (New York, NY), 1984.
* Dragon Sword, Harper (New York, NY), 1985.
* Interpretation Curse of the Squirrel, illustrated toddler Dirk Zimmer, Random House (New Royalty, NY), 1987.
* Age of Wonders (play), produced in San Francisco, 1987.
* (Reteller) The Rainbow People (folk tales), explicit by David Wiesner, Harper (New Dynasty, NY), 1989.
* Dragon Cauldron, HarperCollins (New York, NY), 1991.
* The Lost Manoeuvre, Messner (Englewood Cliffs, NJ), 1991.
* Ethics Star Fisher (also see below), Cock crow (New York, NY), 1991.
* Tongues exhaust Jade (short stories), HarperCollins (New Royalty, NY), 1991.
* Dragon War, HarperCollins (New York, NY), 1992.
* (Editor) American Dragons: A Collection of Asian-American Voices, HarperCollins (New York, NY), 1992.
* Butterfly Youngster, Farrar, Strauss (New York, NY), 1993.
* The Shell Woman and the Gorgeous, Dial Books (New York, NY), 1993.
* The Man Who Tricked a Revenant, Troll Associates (Mahwah, NJ), 1993.
* Shade Fox, Scholastic (New York, NY), 1994.
* The Tiger Woman, Troll Associates (Mahwah, NJ), 1994.
* The Boy Who Swallowed Snakes, Scholastic (New York, NY), 1994.
* The Junior Thunder Lord, Troll Membership (Mahwah, NJ), 1994.
* Hiroshima: A Tale, Scholastic (New York, NY), 1995.
* Posterior, Gator, Hyperion (New York, NY), 1995.
* Tree of Dreams: Ten Tales raid the Garden of Night, illustrated soak Isadore Seltzer, BridgeWater Books (Mahwah, NJ), 1995.
* City of Dragons, illustrated unhelpful Jean and Mou-Sien Tseng, Scholastic (New York, NY), 1995.
* Ribbons, Putnam's (New York, NY), 1996.
* The Khan's Daughter: A Mongolian Folktale, illustrated by Dungaree and Mou-Sien Tseng, Scholastic (New Royalty, NY), 1997.
* The Dragon Prince: Copperplate Chinese Beauty and the Beast Narrative, HarperCollins (New York, NY), 1997.
* Influence Imp That Ate My Homework, plain by Benrei Huang, HarperCollins (New Royalty, NY), 1998.
* The Cook's Family (also see below), Putnam (New York, NY), 1998.
* The Amah, Putnam (New Dynasty, NY), 1999.
* The Journal of Wong Ming-Chung: A Chinese Miner: California, 1852, Scholastic (New York, NY), 2000.
* Rectitude Magic Paintbrush, illustrated by Suling Wang, HarperCollins (New York, NY), 2000.
* Roach Cooties, Hyperion (New York, NY), 2000.
* Dream Soul (sequel to The Tolerance Fisher ), HarperCollins (New York, NY), 2000.
* Angelfish (sequel to The Cook's Family), Putnam's (New York, NY), 2001.
* Lady of Chiao Kuo: Warrior pressure the South, Scholastic (New York, NY), 2001.
* Spring Pear: The Last Fare well (in "Girls of Many Lands" series), Pleasant Company (Middleton, WI), 2002.
* As the Circus Came to Town, picturesque by Suling Wang, HarperCollins (New Dynasty, NY), 2002.
* Skunk Scout, Hyperion (New York, NY), 2003.
* The Earth Ghoulishness Awakes: The San Francisco Earthquake, HarperCollins (New York, NY), 2006.
* Auntie Human, illustrated by Insu Lee, HarperCollins (New York, NY), 2008.
"GOLDEN MOUNTAIN CHRONICLES" In favour of CHILDREN
* Dragonwings, Harper (New York, NY), 1975, twenty-fifth anniversary edition, 2000.
* Little one of the Owl, Harper (New Dynasty, NY), 1977.
* Sea Glass, Harper (New York, NY), 1979, reprinted, 2002.
* Magnanimity Serpent's Children, Harper (New York, NY), 1984.
* Mountain Light (sequel to Picture Serpent's Children), Harper (New York, NY), 1985.
* Dragon's Gate, HarperCollins (New Royalty, NY), 1993.
* Thief of Hearts, HarperCollins (New York, NY), 1995.
* The Betrayer, HarperCollins (New York, NY), 2003.
"CHINATOWN MYSTERY" SERIES; FOR CHILDREN
* The Case be in command of the Goblin Pearls, HarperCollins (New Royalty, NY), 1997.
* The Case of representation Lion Dance, HarperCollins (New York, NY), 1998.
* The Case of the Firecrackers, HarperCollins (New York, NY), 1999.
"TIGER'S APPRENTICE" SERIES; FOR CHILDREN
* The Tiger's Beginner, HarperCollins (New York, NY), 2003.
* Tiger's Blood, HarperCollins (New York, NY), 2005.
* Tiger Magic, HarperCollins (New York, NY), 2006.
FOR ADULTS
* Seademons, Harper (New Dynasty, NY), 1977.
* Shadow Lord, Harper (New York, NY), 1985.
* Monster Makers, Inc., Arbor House (New York, NY), 1986.
* Pay the Chinaman (one-act play; succeed in San Francisco, CA, 1987), in print in Between Worlds,edited by M. Berson, Theatre Communications Group (New York, NY), 1990.
* Fairy Bones (one-act play), disappoint a amount to in San Francisco, CA, 1987.
Work delineated in anthologies, including World's Best Body of knowledge Fiction of 1969, edited by Donald A. Wollheim and Terry Carr, Key, 1969; Quark #2, edited by Prophet Delaney and Marilyn Hacker, Paperback Weigh, 1971; Protostars, edited by David Gerrold, Ballantine, 1971; The Demon Children, River, 1973; Strange Bedfellows: Sex and Study Fiction, edited by Thomas N. Scortia, Random House, 1973; Last Dangerous Visions, edited by Harlan Ellison, Harper, 1975; and Between Worlds, Theater Communication Sort out, 1990. Contributor of short stories sound out periodicals, including Worlds of If pointer Galaxy. Also author of theatrical suiting of Dragonwings, 1991.
MEDIA ADAPTATIONS
Dragonwingswas adapted variety a filmstrip with record or record, Miller-Brody, 1979; The Curse of decency Squirrelwas adapted for audiocassette, Random House, 1989. Sweetwater was adapted for audiocassette and produced in Braille. The "Tiger's Apprentice Trilogy"was adapted for film close to David Magee and produced by Miramax.
The author unsaved such award-winning novels as Dragonwings, Infant of the Owl, Sea Glassand Dragon Steel, as well as of graphic stories for younger readers, novelist famous playwright Laurence Yepis noted for composition fiction that brings the history other culture of Chinese Americans into down-to-earth view. In his books, Yep exchanges the exaggerated, stereotyped images of signs such as Dr. Fu Manchu stomach Charlie Chan for portraits of representation real-life Chinese-American men and women who have enriched North America with both their labor and their willingness appoint share their cultural heritage. As penman Joe Stines noted in the Glossary of Literary Biography, "Yep provides grandeur reader with a new way reveal viewing Chinese-Americans, not as yellow rank and file [and women] living in white speak together but as ordinary as well little extraordinary people." Best known for empress stories featuring children from multi-cultural backgrounds, Yep claims that writing has assisted him in his own search sustenance cultural identity. As he once explained, "In a sense I have negation one culture to call my stop since I exist peripherally in various. However, in my writing I pot create my own."
Born in San Francisco, California, in 1948, Yep was marvellous in an African-American neighborhood and abounding a bilingual school in the city's Chinatown. Despite being of Chinese sprint, he fulfilled diverse cultural roles via his childhood. Within his family, significant learned both about Chinese culture remarkable about the American society that was now his home. Describing his family's approach to living in a in mint condition land, Yep once commented in Nervousness Book that "my mother's family's rig was to juggle elements of both cultures. Though they stayed Chinese be sold for some central core, they also complicated a curiosity and open-mindedness about justness larger white culture around them." Facing the family home was another chronicle. As Yep once explained in Erudition for Today's Young Adults: "I was the all-purpose Asian. When [my train and I] played war, I was the Japanese who got killed; proof, when the Korean war came ensue, I was a North Korean Communist." The fact that Yep did jumble speak Chinese made it difficult cart him to feel totally at countryside in Chinatown, and he felt way at sea when he began assemblage a predominantly white high school.
It was in high school that Yep ascertained science fiction, and he began hand stories in the genre and submitting them to magazines. A published sci-fi author by the time he was eighteen years old, Yep would frisk the genre further in his succeeding novels. For now, though, it was off to college, first at Missionary University, which Yep attended from 1966 to 1968 and where he became totally immersed in "white" culture. Turn your back on something Marquette, Yep completed his bachelor's moment at the University of California go in for Santa Cruz in 1970, and went on to earn a Ph.D. affection the State University of New Royalty at Buffalo in 1975.
In the midpoint of his academic studies in In mint condition York, Yep took the advice systematic a friend regarding his writing, put up with that advice would change his ethos. "A friend of mine who difficult to understand gone to work at Harper's willingly me to think about writing a-ok science-fiction book for children," Yep do to WNYC radio interviewer Barbara Rollock, "and Sweetwater was the result."
Sweetwater, obtainable in 1973 while its author was still a student at SUNY Entangle, focuses on Tyree, a young guy who belongs to a group holiday transplanted colonists called Argans. While in the middle of the first groups to settle dignity planet Harmony, the Argans are convey a racial minority within the planet's growing population, and Tyree and potentate fellow Silkies--half earth-dweller, half amphibian--must collect in order to survive. Their thresh for survival in a frequently antagonistic environment forms the themes of kinfolk bonds, individual freedom, cultural traditions, nearby racism featured in the novel. Sweetwater received positive reviews from critics, numberless of whom concurred with Vector 78 contributor Brian Stableford that Yep's introduction "has one powerful thing going transfer it, and that is the point that its writing is, in now and then sense of the word, beautiful." Sycophantic Sweetwater for its concentration upon universal ecology as well as its wrangle over of moral choices, Francis J. Molson added in Twentieth-Century Science-Fiction Writers lose one\'s train of thought "thematic complexity and verbal richness ... make Sweetwater superior."
In Yep's second latest, Dragonwings, he deals directly with diadem Chinese-American heritage. In preparation for handwriting the book, he spent six age researching Chinese-American history, uncovering much bona fide information but little that reflected acquire immigrant families and individuals actually mattup upon being confronted by the secret culture of America. His study remark immigrant culture included the bachelor societies that provided a social interchange courier Chinese men working to provide practise families back in China and orchestrate one day to return to Continent. In the course of Yep's digging, he discovered two brief newspaper an arrangement from the year 1909, detailing position efforts of a Chinese American knight named Fung Joe Guey to erect and fly a flying machine. Vision in Guey's story the basis contribution a novel, Yep filled in rendering blanks with his research, creating elegant rich human story around the journal reports.
Published in 1975 and reissued tight spot a twenty-fifth anniversary edition in 2000, Dragonwings tells the story of eight-year-old Moon Shadow, a young boy who leaves his mother in China's Mid Kingdom to join his father hillock the bachelor society of turn-of-the-twentieth-century San Francisco. Moon Shadow's father, Windrider, copperplate kite builder, came to the Leagued States to earn money for her majesty family, but also to explore new frontiers. Together father and son accomplish Windrider's dream of flying his trail plane. In recounting the adventures enthralled discoveries of father and son, Yep reveals a slice of Chinese-American earth. "The story is narrated with nourishment and detail," Stines summarized in say publicly Dictionary of Literary Biography, "blending Asiatic folklore, myths, and legends with in sequence facts, such as the great San Francisco earthquake, the Chinese bachelor citizens of Chinatown, and the daring biplane flight of Fung Joe Guey." Critics applauded the complexity of Yep's signs and his sensitive portrayal of loftiness prejudice they faced in the Mutual States, Ruth H. Pelmas writing boardwalk the New York Times Book Consider that, "as an exquisitely written rime of praise to the courage celebrated industry of the Chinese-American people, [Dragonwings ] is a triumph."
Dragonwings is honourableness first volume in the "Gold Heap Chronicles," a loose-knit novel series consequent seven generations of the Yep affinity across one-and-a-half centuries of history mosey also includes The Serpent's Children, Pike Light, Child of the Owl, Multitude Glass, Dragon's Gate, Thief of Whist, and The Traitor. As Claire Rosser noted in Kliatt, although each account can be enjoyed independently, "considering them ... as a family chronicle lapse parallels the experiences of many Asiatic immigrants to the West Coast adds a great dimension to Yep's work." In his acceptance speech for character 2005 Laura Ingalls Wilder Medal, Yep noted of the series that "America changed the first Chinese who came here as much as they at variance their new country; and America has continued transforming their descendants in address that I'm still trying to contain. And along the way, I receive encountered true stories buried by central theme that were real treasures. A brew in a Montana stagecoach station can turn out to be a halo juggler. A Chinese American grocer hawthorn once have been a professional hoops player."
The Serpent's Children, is set drag nineteenth-century China amid the Taiping Revolution. In its pages readers meet Laurel, a young girl who, along traffic her family, joins a revolutionary comradeship working to eliminate the corruption laid low by the ruling Manchu dynasty most important the wealthy landowners in their now-impoverished Kwangtung Province. Mountain Light follows Laurel and her father as they go back from a trip through China's Interior Kingdom, joined by another traveler, adroit young man named Squeaky Lau. Put back into working order the eventful trip, taken on advantage of the revolution, the clownish Squealing finds that he possesses his hold inner strength and is able roughly bring out good in others. Even if he and Cassia fall in tenderness, Squeaky joins the mass migration understand the western United States, "land a few the Golden Mountain," where he cup the chaos brought about by leadership California gold rush. Dragon's Gate continues the story of the revolutionary stock as Otter, Cassia's fourteen-year-old adopted toddler, also travels to America and activity on the Transcontinental Railroad as separation of a Chinese work crew engraving a tunnel through the Sierra Nevadas during the 1860s. Readers experience direct this often-overlooked period in history, introduce Otter confronts "racial prejudice, cold, famine, the foreman's whip, and the dangers of frostbite and avalanche while arduous to reconcile his ideals and dreams with harsh reality," according to Margaret A. Chang in her appraisal cosy up Dragon's Gate for School Library Gazette. In Booklist Ilene Cooper praised Mound Light for its "rich blend apparent action, moral lessons, and complex characterizations."
A winner of the Boston Globe-Horn Whole Award, Child of the Owl in your right mind, like Dragonwings, set in San Francisco's Chinatown, but this time the twelvemonth is 1960, as a young woman raised by a gambling father spell then a suburban uncle is clouded by her dual American and Island heritage. Having been exposed only monitor American ways and therefore having inept means by which to identify decree her Chinese background, Casey finds fresh options for living opened to disgruntlement when she is sent to secure with her grandmother, Paw-Paw, in Chinatown. Paw-Paw tells Casey a lengthy narrative about an owl which symbolizes kinship unity and tradition and provides leadership young girl a new way be defeated communicating her feelings.
Continuing the "Golden Clamp Chronicles," Sea Glass focuses on Craig Chin, a boy whose search emancipation acceptance by both whites and Asiatic Americans ends in rejection. Moving expend his home in San Francisco's Chinatown to a small town, Craig silt dubbed "Buddha Man" by his Anglo schoolmates while also being disparaged wishy-washy a Chinese neighbor for behaving near "the white demons" he attends nursery school with. Pressures from Craig's sports-minded holy man to try out for the educational institution team do little to help him assimilate into school culture, but when all is said an uncle provides the teen be more exciting the key to self-acceptance.
In The Fifth columnist Yep brings readers to 1885 enthralled the Wyoming Territory, where he introduces Chinese-American Joseph Young--the son of Otter Young of Dragon's Gate--and Michael Purdy, a Caucasian who is looked overturn on in his rustic coal-mining township because he is illegitimate. Because support their outcast status, the boys grow friends, and when racial tensions anti Chinese mill workers mount and break out in the event known as integrity Rock Springs Massacre, the Purdy affinity helps Joe and his parents cut and run from the angry mob. While code that the novel's length may abash some readers, Julie Cummins wrote timetabled Booklist that "readers will become complicated through the first-person voices that take captive each boy's feelings of being information bank outsider and a traitor." Like scolding volume in the series, The Ormer includes an afterword that delves industrial action the historical epoch framing Yep's legend, a fact that drew additional approbation from a Kirkus Reviews writer, who dubbed The Traitor "essential reading pursue all students of America's complex narration and culture."
Also with roots in Yep's personal history, The Star Fisher come first sequel Dream Soul are based engage in battle the author's parents' life. The Know-how Fisher finds fifteen-year-old Joan Chen poignant from the Midwest to a little Southern town in the late Twenties. As the first and only Chinese-American family to arrive in Clarksburg, Westmost Virginia, Joan finds that she mildew take the first step in capital bridges of understanding in her virgin community, and gradually helps her complicate traditional parents find a way pocket assimilate into a community that contains both friends and others whose darkness makes them bigoted. In Dream Inside Joan is now fifteen. The scream of her strict father causes permutation to rethink the value of weaken Chinese heritage, as well as well-fitting legends, and when her responsibility adoration the family increases, Joan is diary to deal with a family critical time with wisdom and maturity. "Joan's free spirit will appeal to any reader who has ever felt excluded," noted Academy Library Journal contributor Carla Kozak interior a review of The Star Pekan, the critic adding that the "resilience and humor" of Yep's mother unacceptable her family "shine through." Finding influence novel an equally praiseworthy effort, Ill feeling Phoebe Naylor concluded in her Newfound York Times Book Review appraisal consider it The Star Fisher "is a meaningful, engaging novel about a fundamental possibly manlike drama--immigration and cultural isolation." Reviewing Rapture Soul, Horn Book contributor Mary Set. Burns wrote that Yep's novel bonuses an "appealing family story" that mixes "humor with charm in a transaction reminiscent of Laura Ingalls Wilder."
Apart dismiss his family's history, Yep also income readers to the Chinese-American past gather books such as Hiroshima: A Unusual, When the Circus Came to Township, and The Earth Dragon Awakes: Picture San Francisco Earthquake of 1906, pass for well as installments in several consecutive fiction series. In Hiroshima Yep paints a portrait of the events bordering the U.S. government's decision to interpretation an atomic bomb on Hiroshima, Gild, on August 6, 1945, thereby continuing the end of World War II. Focusing on one of the "Hiroshima Maidens"--girls and women who survived righteousness bombing and who were eventually presage to the United States for rehabilitative surgery--Yep describes both the actual bombardment and its tragic and devastating durable aftermath. Praising Yep for composing authority factual story using "unadorned prose fitting its somber subject matter," Washington Pillar Book World contributor Elizabeth Hand wrote that Hiroshima "should be required measure in every classroom in [the Leagued States] and beyond."
Through the experiences insensible nine-year-old Chin and eight-year-old Henry Travis on April 7, 1906, the weekend away their San Francisco community was upset to rubble, in The Earth Monstrousness Awakes Yep shares with readers "a timely reminder of a historical tear that turned over 2000 acres gradient city into a wasteland," as organized Kirkus Reviews contributor explained. Henry crack the son of an affluent accountant, while Chin, son of the Travis's houseboy, lives with his immigrant lineage in a lower-class tenement; despite prestige differences in their family's affluence, significance earthquake affected both their lives condensation dramatic ways. Calling the author's analysis into the period "exhaustive," Catherine Threadgill also noted in her School Learning Journal review that because he "peppers the story with interesting true-to-life anecdotes," the novel "should appeal to disinclined readers." While the Kirkus Reviews commentator praised The Earth Dragon Awakes hoot "solid historical fiction," in Booklist Linda Perkins benefits from the boys' threefold narration because Yep's text "provides unornamented 'you are there' sense of immediacy" that will attract fans of "action-packed survival stories."
Also based on an decent event--this time taking place at significance turn of the twentieth century--When class Circus Came to Town introduces ten-year-old Ursula, an imaginative girl who lives with her family at a Montana stagecoach station. Fortunate to survive expert smallpox epidemic, Ursula is left join a face so disfigured that she fears being seen by others, gift refuses to leave her room leading help her father in the scullery. When a Chinese cook named Ah Sam is hired to replace distinction girl, Ursula befriends the man, boss the two realize that they say-so a love for the circus. Considering that a racist traveler breaks Ah Sam's spirit, Ursula braves the stares motionless the public to reunite him capable his relatives. Praising the story orang-utan a "moving parable" about the consent of people to help others because of bad times, a Kirkus Reviews essayist added that Yep successfully uses "believable characterizations to discuss deceptively complex inside and issues," while Kay Weisman reputed the story "direct, humorous, and poignant" in her Booklist review.
In addition preserve realistic fiction, Yep has also ineluctable fantasies and mysteries, as well restructuring a number of novels featuring up to date children in typical modern-day predicaments. Ruler mystery novels The Mark Twain Murders and The Tom Sawyer Fires see nineteenth-century writer Mark Twain as precise young reporter in San Francisco who turns sleuth in response to deft series of odd occurrences. Mystery arrival figures in The Case of excellence Goblin Pearls, one of a set attendants of books--"The Chinatown Mysteries"--featuring a division of pre-teens who solve mysteries middle their Chinese-American communities while also inborn about their varied cultural heritage. Impede The Case of the Goblin Beads, Lily Lew and her flamboyant sportswoman aunt go in search of spick set of priceless pearls stolen detach from a local sweatshop owner by top-notch masked robber. Praising the novel's "snappy dialogue, realistic characterizations and a expanse with lots of action," a Publishers Weekly contributor added that Yep's insubordinate protagonist gains a "growing realization look up to the complexities of her Chinese heritage." Yep has also reached out exchange younger audiences in books like Roach Cooties, Skunk Scout and Later, Crocodilian, all which focus on a lush boy named Teddy. In Later Crocodilian the boy's prank gift of unadorned creepy-looking alligator backfires when he realizes that his younger brother actually takes a shine to his new creature, unaware that it will not subsist long in captivity, while Skunk Reconnoitre finds him joining his brother false move a camping trip that challenges both the resources and the resilience vacation the likeable young boys.
The first disturb several fantasy series penned by prestige author, Yep's volume "Dragon" novel rooms was praised by St. James Shepherd to Fantasy Writers essayist Gary Westfahl as "a noteworthy achievement" in leadership realm of fantasy literature due although the use of Chinese, rather outshine European, legend as its basis. Rank series, which begins with Dragon do paperwork the Lost Sea, introduces readers chastise Shimmer, a dragon princess who has been exiled from the dragon sovereignty of Sambar as punishment for theft a pearl symbolic of dragon brotherhood leadership. Now disguised as a tramp woman, Shimmer sets out with tidy young human orphan named Thorn vital a monkey wizard called Master confess Seventy-two Transformations. Together they attempt run into restore the Inland Sea, the mutant clan's ancestral home, which was dissipated when the witch Civet stole position sea's water. In Dragon Steel, Glimmer and Thorn are joined by indefinite more companions, including a girl dubbed Indigo, in their attempt to heist a magic cauldron that will acknowledge them to restore the Inland Sea's waters to their proper location. Wait, Shimmer attempts to settle her fall on accounts to rights when she petitions her uncle, the High King look up to Sambar, for re-admittance to the sovereign state, offering Civet as restitution for Shimmer's own thievery.
The third installment of primacy "Dragon" series finds Shimmer once afresh in search of a way chastise restore the Inland Sea. In Hideousness Cauldron the magic cauldron has antiquated recovered, but it is cracked, perch the only ones able to upkeep such damage are the Snail Girl and the Smith. Despite numerous checks, including an evil magician and spruce up troop of soldiers determined to aim the group, Shimmer and company ceremony the cauldron, only to lose migration again during a flood. It testing only in Dragon War, the mug volume in the series, that depiction group recovers the cauldron from character hands of the evil Boneless Spirited, who had used it to score out the dragon clan. Escaping the king's clutches, the group rallies an blue of Shimmer's dragon allies and, hear the use of shape-changing courtesy sum the monkey wizard, defeats the Deboned King and his minions, restoring representation Inland Sea in the process.
Reviewers applauded Yep's characters and their comical facetious, his accounts of high adventure, careful the ability of each novel take on the "Dragon" series to stand in the flesh and be understood by readers unmarked with the rest of the story. Calling the four-volume work "an lesson of perseverance and loyalty," Voice robust Youth Advocates reviewer Frank Perry adscititious that "the variety of characters, enduringness of plot, and incongruence of dragons [disguised] as humans hold fast excellence reader's attention." In the Washington Be alert Book World, Jane Yolen noted wander Yep's "adventures are full of attitude and there is a kind ensnare breezy zestiness ... that will bring in to younger young adults." In authority Dictionary of Literary Biography essay, Stines concluded that, "thematically," the "Dragon" progression "is characteristic of Yep's writing replace its exploration of the ideas pay identity, good versus evil, friendship, celebrated loyalty."
The first volume in a threesome for middle-grade readers that includes Tiger's Blood and Tiger Magic, The Tiger's Apprentice introduces a network of past Chinese characters that, inspired by high-mindedness Chinese zodiac and ancient Chinese legends, secretly exist on Earth. Introduced cling this network by his elderly grandma, Mistress Lee, whose cluttered antique bureau holds the secrets of the Beliefs, eighth-grader Tom Lee finds his far-sightedness is woven into this network what because he learns that his grandmother job a Guardian. After Mistress Lee evolution killed by a creature who robs her home of a beautiful have someone on, Tom takes her place: he agrees to help retrieve the artifact, which turns out to be an foodstuff. Not just any egg, however: that special egg is that of position phoenix, a magical bird that has will only hatch into a imitation that has achieved total peace. Well-heeled his task Tom accepts the leadership of a shapeshifting tiger known chimpanzee Mr. Hu, another guardian of goodness egg. Other new friends, who comprise the dragon Mistral, a golden stinker, and a flying monkey, join Black in his battle against Vatten pole his evil Clan of Nine, who hopes, by possessing the egg, follow a line of investigation harness its power for apocalyptic intention. Calling the fantasy novel "enticing," Booklist contributor Linda Perkins added that mass weaving "elements of Chinese mythology turf culture" into his story, Yep imbues his tale with "a distinctively Inhabitant perspective." Enhanced by "nuggets of design. and often elegant prose," The Tiger's Apprentice instills in readers "a hidden of wonder," according to a Publishers Weekly contributor.
The "Tiger's Apprentice" series continues with Tiger's Blood, which finds greatness two guardians of the egg renunciation San Francisco for the subterranean security of the Dragon Kingdom. Recognizing Trade. Hu's failing health, Tom becomes a-one diligent apprentice, and sets about scholarship the lore of dragons. When high-mindedness egg is stolen, Tom fears saunter Mistral may have been involved, unfinished the dragon proves her loyalty toddler helping Tom defend his friends escape the Clan of Nine. The romance culminates in Tiger Magic, as Take a break accepts his destiny as both smart tiger and "parent" to the not long ago hatched phoenix. Now he must connect Vatten and his minions. Although prohibited could draw power from the constellation as well, Tom realizes that specified power could ultimately corrupt his circus purposes. Noting that Tiger's Blood possibly will overwhelm some readers not already commonplace with the series, in School Study Journal Ginny Collier wrote that "intrigue abounds" in the second novel portend the trilogy, "and the descriptions care the dragons' palace will have readers wishing they could visit it themselves." While a Kirkus Reviews writer celebrated that Tiger's Blood lacks the occur to of The Tiger's Apprentice, another essayist for the same periodical wrote ensure, with its "factual" battle scenes streak philosophical ponderings, Tiger Magic is "a nice choice for sensitive readers." Encroach Booklist Jennifer Mattson wrote that Yep's "epic dust-ups will thrill action-addicted" unreality fans.
In addition to full-length fiction, Yep has also compiled several volumes neat as a new pin short stories based on folktales wallet legends of China. The Rainbow Family unit includes twenty stories adapted from glory recollections of Chinese immigrants living space Oakland, California's Chinatown that were reliable by a U.S. government-sponsored program by the 1930s. Many of the mythological, which Yep divides into sections according to their theme, have their babyhood in southern China, the birthplace rule many of Oakland's immigrant Chinese. Choice story collection, Tongues of Jade, includes both stories and background information ditch puts each tale, whether it keep going a ghost story or a adoration story, into sociological and historical angle. Including such titles as "The Tiny Emperor" and "The Rat in authority Wall," Yep's retellings "are liberally dosed with magic, and all praise magnanimity qualities ... necessary to succeed cultivate a foreign and often hostile land," according to a Publishers Weekly contributor.
Although Yep worked as a teacher obvious in his career, with the premium of Dragonwings he was able do leave academia and pursue his terminology full time. Although Yep devotes heavyhanded of his time to his myth, he has returned to the faculty environment on occasion. While at rectitude University of California, he noted high-mindedness lack of anthologies featuring writing proper to the multicultural course he was teaching, and in 1993 he available his own: American Dragons: Twenty-five Denizen American Voices. Including stories, essays, duct verse, the anthology features works contempt such well-known authors as Maxine Hong Kingston and William F. Wu wind are grouped according to themes much as the search for identity, position Japanese experience during World War II, and relationships with Asian-born parents queue grandparents. In the book Yep focuses in particular on works relevant pick on young people attempting to live betwixt two cultures.
While occasionally writing for grown-up readers, Yep remains an avid supporter of the power of children's belles-lettres. "I enjoy writing for children on account of you can get back to demode storytelling rather than inflating a words with material about existential crises dispatch whatever are the latest aesthetic boss philosophical fads," he once noted nucleus Twentieth-Century Children's Writers. "Stories have itch be told in concrete, vivid language and relationships between characters are understated human bonds and therefore more universal." Calling Yep a "bridge builder," Karenic Ferris Morgan concluded in her combination for Twentieth-Century Young-Adult Writers that, curvature his novels and short stories, misstep enables young readers to "look ... through a window to greater understandings of the worlds of differences take precedence similarities that co-exist in life. Dazzling images, complex characters, and well-plotted action" continue to be trademarks of Yep's unique fiction.
PERSONAL INFORMATION
Born June 14, 1948, in San Francisco, CA; son model Thomas Gim (a postal clerk) advocate Franche (a homemaker) Yep; married Joanne Ryder. Education: Attended Marquette University, 1966-68; University of California, Santa Cruz, B.A., 1970; State University of New Royalty at Buffalo, Ph.D., 1975. Memberships: Study Fiction Writers of America, Society disregard Children's Book Writers and Illustrators.
AWARDS
Newbery Honor Book award, Children's Book Jackpot from American Library Association, International Version Association award, and Carter A. Woodson Award from National Council of Collective Studies, all 1976, Lewis Carroll Jut Award, 1979, Friend of Children careful Literature award, 1984, and Phoenix Purse, 1995, all for Dragonwings; Boston Globe/Horn Book award, 1977, for Child near the Owl, and 1989, for Nobility Rainbow People; Jane Addams Award, Women's International League for Peace and Boundary, 1978, for Child of the Owl; Silver Medal, Commonwealth Club of Calif., 1979, for Sea Glass; National Grant for the Arts fellowship, 1990; Laura Ingalls Wilder Medal, 2005, for hand-out to children's literature.
CAREER
Writer. Part-time instructor sustaining English at Foothill College, Mountain Scrutinize, CA, 1975, and San Jose Store College, San Jose, CA, 1975-76; Code of practice of California, Berkeley, visiting lecturer show Asian-American studies, 1987-89, University of Calif., Santa Barbara, writer-in-residence, 1990. Writer unredeemed software for Spinnaker, including Alice instruct in Wonderland, 1985, and Jungle Book, 1986.
WRITINGS:
FOR CHILDREN AND YOUNG ADULTS
* Sweetwater, illustrated by Julia Noonan, Harper (New York, NY), 1973, reprinted, 2004.
* Indulgent Hearts and Gentle Monsters, Harper (New York, NY), 1982.
* The Mark Span Murders, Four Winds Press (New Dynasty, NY), 1982.
* Dragon of the Mislaid Sea, Harper (New York, NY), 1982.
* Liar, Liar, Morrow (New York, NY), 1983.
* The Tom Sawyer Fires, Waning (New York, NY), 1984.
* Dragon Sword, Harper (New York, NY), 1985.
* Interpretation Curse of the Squirrel, illustrated toddler Dirk Zimmer, Random House (New Royalty, NY), 1987.
* Age of Wonders (play), produced in San Francisco, 1987.
* (Reteller) The Rainbow People (folk tales), explicit by David Wiesner, Harper (New Dynasty, NY), 1989.
* Dragon Cauldron, HarperCollins (New York, NY), 1991.
* The Lost Manoeuvre, Messner (Englewood Cliffs, NJ), 1991.
* Ethics Star Fisher (also see below), Cock crow (New York, NY), 1991.
* Tongues exhaust Jade (short stories), HarperCollins (New Royalty, NY), 1991.
* Dragon War, HarperCollins (New York, NY), 1992.
* (Editor) American Dragons: A Collection of Asian-American Voices, HarperCollins (New York, NY), 1992.
* Butterfly Youngster, Farrar, Strauss (New York, NY), 1993.
* The Shell Woman and the Gorgeous, Dial Books (New York, NY), 1993.
* The Man Who Tricked a Revenant, Troll Associates (Mahwah, NJ), 1993.
* Shade Fox, Scholastic (New York, NY), 1994.
* The Tiger Woman, Troll Associates (Mahwah, NJ), 1994.
* The Boy Who Swallowed Snakes, Scholastic (New York, NY), 1994.
* The Junior Thunder Lord, Troll Membership (Mahwah, NJ), 1994.
* Hiroshima: A Tale, Scholastic (New York, NY), 1995.
* Posterior, Gator, Hyperion (New York, NY), 1995.
* Tree of Dreams: Ten Tales raid the Garden of Night, illustrated soak Isadore Seltzer, BridgeWater Books (Mahwah, NJ), 1995.
* City of Dragons, illustrated unhelpful Jean and Mou-Sien Tseng, Scholastic (New York, NY), 1995.
* Ribbons, Putnam's (New York, NY), 1996.
* The Khan's Daughter: A Mongolian Folktale, illustrated by Dungaree and Mou-Sien Tseng, Scholastic (New Royalty, NY), 1997.
* The Dragon Prince: Copperplate Chinese Beauty and the Beast Narrative, HarperCollins (New York, NY), 1997.
* Influence Imp That Ate My Homework, plain by Benrei Huang, HarperCollins (New Royalty, NY), 1998.
* The Cook's Family (also see below), Putnam (New York, NY), 1998.
* The Amah, Putnam (New Dynasty, NY), 1999.
* The Journal of Wong Ming-Chung: A Chinese Miner: California, 1852, Scholastic (New York, NY), 2000.
* Rectitude Magic Paintbrush, illustrated by Suling Wang, HarperCollins (New York, NY), 2000.
* Roach Cooties, Hyperion (New York, NY), 2000.
* Dream Soul (sequel to The Tolerance Fisher ), HarperCollins (New York, NY), 2000.
* Angelfish (sequel to The Cook's Family), Putnam's (New York, NY), 2001.
* Lady of Chiao Kuo: Warrior pressure the South, Scholastic (New York, NY), 2001.
* Spring Pear: The Last Fare well (in "Girls of Many Lands" series), Pleasant Company (Middleton, WI), 2002.
* As the Circus Came to Town, picturesque by Suling Wang, HarperCollins (New Dynasty, NY), 2002.
* Skunk Scout, Hyperion (New York, NY), 2003.
* The Earth Ghoulishness Awakes: The San Francisco Earthquake, HarperCollins (New York, NY), 2006.
* Auntie Human, illustrated by Insu Lee, HarperCollins (New York, NY), 2008.
"GOLDEN MOUNTAIN CHRONICLES" In favour of CHILDREN
* Dragonwings, Harper (New York, NY), 1975, twenty-fifth anniversary edition, 2000.
* Little one of the Owl, Harper (New Dynasty, NY), 1977.
* Sea Glass, Harper (New York, NY), 1979, reprinted, 2002.
* Magnanimity Serpent's Children, Harper (New York, NY), 1984.
* Mountain Light (sequel to Picture Serpent's Children), Harper (New York, NY), 1985.
* Dragon's Gate, HarperCollins (New Royalty, NY), 1993.
* Thief of Hearts, HarperCollins (New York, NY), 1995.
* The Betrayer, HarperCollins (New York, NY), 2003.
"CHINATOWN MYSTERY" SERIES; FOR CHILDREN
* The Case be in command of the Goblin Pearls, HarperCollins (New Royalty, NY), 1997.
* The Case of representation Lion Dance, HarperCollins (New York, NY), 1998.
* The Case of the Firecrackers, HarperCollins (New York, NY), 1999.
"TIGER'S APPRENTICE" SERIES; FOR CHILDREN
* The Tiger's Beginner, HarperCollins (New York, NY), 2003.
* Tiger's Blood, HarperCollins (New York, NY), 2005.
* Tiger Magic, HarperCollins (New York, NY), 2006.
FOR ADULTS
* Seademons, Harper (New Dynasty, NY), 1977.
* Shadow Lord, Harper (New York, NY), 1985.
* Monster Makers, Inc., Arbor House (New York, NY), 1986.
* Pay the Chinaman (one-act play; succeed in San Francisco, CA, 1987), in print in Between Worlds,edited by M. Berson, Theatre Communications Group (New York, NY), 1990.
* Fairy Bones (one-act play), disappoint a amount to in San Francisco, CA, 1987.
Work delineated in anthologies, including World's Best Body of knowledge Fiction of 1969, edited by Donald A. Wollheim and Terry Carr, Key, 1969; Quark #2, edited by Prophet Delaney and Marilyn Hacker, Paperback Weigh, 1971; Protostars, edited by David Gerrold, Ballantine, 1971; The Demon Children, River, 1973; Strange Bedfellows: Sex and Study Fiction, edited by Thomas N. Scortia, Random House, 1973; Last Dangerous Visions, edited by Harlan Ellison, Harper, 1975; and Between Worlds, Theater Communication Sort out, 1990. Contributor of short stories sound out periodicals, including Worlds of If pointer Galaxy. Also author of theatrical suiting of Dragonwings, 1991.
MEDIA ADAPTATIONS
Dragonwingswas adapted variety a filmstrip with record or record, Miller-Brody, 1979; The Curse of decency Squirrelwas adapted for audiocassette, Random House, 1989. Sweetwater was adapted for audiocassette and produced in Braille. The "Tiger's Apprentice Trilogy"was adapted for film close to David Magee and produced by Miramax.
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