When the Sea Turned to Silver by Grace Lin

When the sea turned to silver and the cold chilled the light of the sun, Pinmei knew the Black Tortoise of Winter had arrived with his usual calmness.

Grace Lin proves once again that she is a masterful storyteller. Like her two previous books, Where the Mountain Meets the Moon, and Starry River of the Sky, When the Sea Turned To Silver celebrates the act of telling stories, and is filled with small heroes (children) who are able to accomplish great things. All in the face of danger!

Pinmei lives with her grandmother Amah very high up in the mountains. Amah embroiders silks by day and tells her granddaughter, and the villagers, stories by night. There is talk of the Tiger Emperor coming to their village to look for a Luminous Stone that Lights the Night. Nobody has heard of such a thing.

“Amah, these stories aren’t real, are they?” Pinmei asked. “Was there really a tortoise or a Nuwa?”

Amah spooned the rice from the pot. She handed Pinmei her plain bowl, the cooked grains shining like a mound of pearls against the dark pottery.

“They say when you see a rainbow in the sky, you are seeing Nuwa and the colored stones she put there,” Amah said. She gave Pinmei a smile, her face wrinkling like the pit of a peach. “Whether you believe that or any of the things I tell you is up to you.”

But when the Emperor’s soldiers arrive in the middle of the night to take Amah, Pinmei must hide in an old gang, or large clay pot that used to hold wine. Pinmei holds her breath, terrified out of her wits, wondering why in the world the Emperor himself would show up to kidnap her grandmother!

Along with Yishan, the boy who lives higher up the mountain, timid and shy Pinmei must find the courage within her to rescue her grandmother.

Lin’s own gorgeous illustrations can be found inside the book, where the stories are illustrated in jewel-like tones. Set in a re-imagined Ancient China, ancient Chinese folklore is an evident influence in Lin’s stories. When the Sea Turned To Silver is beautifully written and I think that children ages 8-12 will relate to Pinmei and Yishan, and will enjoy accompanying the two children on their journey to rescue Amah.

When the Sea Turned to Silver was a National Book Finalist for 2016. Congrats to Grace Lin!

The Sun Is Also A Star by Nicola Yoon

The Sun Is Also A Star by Nicola Yoon (author of Everything, Everything) is one of the most stunning books that I have read this year. It is a love story, it is an immigration story, it is a story of two people, and yet, a story of the universe.

         The entire story takes place throughout the span of a day—less than 24 hours in New York City. The story alternates between Natasha Kingsley and Daniel Jae Ho Bae, with a few other points of view along the way. Natasha is an immigrant from Jamaica. She has lived in the United States for most of her life. On her last day in the United States, the day The Sun Is Also A Star takes place, she is trying all that she can to stop her family’s deportation back to Jamaica. Daniel, on the other hand, is a first generation Korean-American, meaning that his parents moved to the United States, and he has full citizenship. On the day he meets Natasha, he is on his way to a college interview, so he can become a doctor at Yale like his parents want. What he wants is to write poetry.

         The Sun Is Also A Star is a novel that examines all the tiny ways in which human lives collide, and the way in which your actions can create a ripple effect. Natasha, a budding scientist, believes in “observable facts.” She thinks that love is just a series of chemical reactions. But when she meets Daniel, she has to admit that maybe there is something more.

         The Sun Is Also A Star is a beautiful and very real examination of the immigrant experience. How immigrants, especially, know that their lives turn out differently than what they expected. People leave behind homes and family for a strange land where the language is unfamiliar. They can only hope they are allowed to stay and not be deported. They can only hope for a better life for their family. The future is not foreseeable, but every action has a consequence. Loving, even for a short amount of time, is better than not loving at all.

“They have a sense that the length of a day is mutable, and you can never see the end from the beginning. They have a sense that love changes all things all the time.

That’s what love is for.”

          Two people bumping into each other on the street is a minor collision in the gran-scheme universe. What happens afterwards? A 2016 finalist for the National Book Award, The Sun Is Also A Star will have you believing in fate, love, and the ways the universe connects all of us.

Nicola Yoon