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Grace Lin: Children’s Author
Grace Lin is an American author and the children of Taiwanese immigrants to the United
States. Born in 1974, Lin grew up in both New York and Massachusetts in a variety of urban,
suburban, and more rural settings. Like many American children of Chinese immigrants, Grace
received a strong dose of traditional Chinese culture throughout her childhood that constantly
reminded her of the importance of her roots and the splendor of her ancestral civilization. This
would prepare her to become the outstanding children’s author that she now is, focusing on
Chinese themes for a strictly English-speaking audience. Her status as one of three sisters, it
turned out, would eventually endow her works with a uniquely feminist twist that is empowering
but not overbearing. In fact, the Disney movie Mulan—in which a clever girl, disguised as a
male soldier, singlehandedly saves China from invading barbarians—was critically important to
Grace because it was the first time that a Chinese female character was depicted in a lead role,
not as a traditional, nearly mute, subordinate (“Author Interview: Grace Lin”).
Grace attended the Rhode Island School of Design but ultimately washed out as an artist.
This motivated her to pursue a shelved childhood dream of becoming a children’s writer. As
Grace herself writes, “Books erase bias, they make the uncommon everyday, and the mundane
exotic. A book makes all cultures universal” (“Press Kit”). The Newbery Medal, the New York
Times Bestsellers List, and an invitation to display her works at the White House are evidence of
her consummate skill as a writer and champion of cultural and sexual equality. Three of her
most critical works that serve to characterize her unique features as a writer are Where the
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Mountain Meets the Moon, When the Sea Turned to Silver, and The Year of the Dog. We
proceed to examine each of these in detail before turning to the common themes and
characteristics that unite the three.
Where the Mountain Meets the Moon is a unique tale that interweaves important Chinese
mythological themes with a voyage of discovery. The heroine, Minli—motivated by her father’s
stories—embarks on a journey to discover the Old Man in the Moon. We can see in this an
immediate accession to American themes that will be more familiar to her audience than Chinese
ones, as the Chinese traditionally personify the Moon as a rabbit, not as a man. The work is
presented in a rich, unusual font that bespeaks a certain Oriental mystery and is illustrated with
