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Child of the Owl – Laurence Yep

Laurence Yep is another one of my favorite young adult authors. In “Child of the Owl,” he takes us to a world he knew well – Chinatown in the 1960’s.

Our character is Casey, the twelve-year-old daughter of a compulsive gambler named Barney. He’s taken her all over the country, following one hot tip after another, most of the time having to live in run-down hotels and washing dishes in restaurants for their dinner. He keeps telling her that someday, he’ll hit it big and they’ll have a penthouse full of comics and games and clothes, and she pretends to believe him, but deep down, she knows they’ll always be one step behind the big win. She doesn’t mind, though, because she has him.

When he gets beat up by some thugs on his way to pay his bookie and lands in the hospital for a while, Casey goes to live with Paw-Paw, her mother’s mother, in Chinatown. Casey has never spent much time learning about her Chinese heritage; born and raised in the U.S., she’s always just considered herself American. Her grandmother’s ways are strange to her, and she resents being taken away from her father, especially when he calls to tell her that he’s been released from the hospital but needs to do some traveling to make the money back up. He asks Casey to stay with Paw-Paw until the end of the school year. She agrees, only because he asks her.

Casey starts to attend Chinese school, only to find that the other students dislike her because she doesn’t speak any Chinese. Little by little, Paw-Paw teaches her what it means to be Chinese, and how that heritage plays into every aspect of her life. She goes to see real kung fu movies and spends time visiting with the elderly Chinese in the area, and finds that her love for the old ways grows the more she learns about it. It gives her the stability to know what to do when her life falls out from under her.

There are a few swear words in the book but none that marred my enjoyment of the story. I’d recommend for ages 13 and up. I appreciated the reminder of how important it is to look to our past to learn about ourselves, and of the deep bonds that are formed with family. This one’s definitely a keeper.

(This book was published in 1977 by Harper Trophy.)

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