June 25, 2019
Where the Mountain Meets the Moon
Written by Grace Lin
Fiction
Modern Fantasy
Awards
2010 Newbery Honor Book
2010 Mythopoeic Fantasy Award for Children’s Literature
About the author
Grace Lin is a American author and illustrator of children’s picture books, early readers, and young adult novels. She is a New York Times bestselling author and many of her books have received awards and honors. Grace Lin focuses on the Asian-American experience in her books Lin also co-hosts a book podcast with her best friend Alvina Ling titled Book Friends Forever. The podcast is about friendship, books, publishing, and life!
A book can show you the world!”
Grace Lin – Tedxtalk
Book Summary
Where the Mountain Meets the Moon is a fantastical adventure set in a poor village near the Fruitless Mountain where Minli lives with her Ma and Ba. Minli is a young girl that works with Ma and Ba in the rice field. Minli’s father, Ba, loves to tell her old folktales and stories about dragons and the Old Man on the Moon. After meeting a goldfish merchant, she buys a goldfish that she is told will change her family’s fortune. Little does Minli know, that this simple purchase, would indeed change her fortune. She sets out on a journey to find the Old Man on the Moon, for he is the one that could answer all her questions and she finds so much more than she ever asked for.
As much as kids need books to be mirrors, kids need books to be windows. Kids who always see themselves in books need to be able to see things from other viewpoints.”
Grace Lin – Tedxtalk
Modern Fantasy
I fell in love with this book and couldn’t put it down until I was done with it! Where the Mountain Meets the Moon falls into the genre of modern fantasy, but also has some traits of folklore in it, and Grace Lin does an exceptional job at creating a magical, fantasy world full of adventure, dragons, and heroism. The book portrays many characteristics of a modern fantasy story, such as “strong, believable characters” (Tunnell, Jacobs, Young, & Bryan, 2016, p. 123). Minli is described as “not brown and dull like the rest of the village” but as a young girl with “glossy black hair with pink cheeks, shining eyes always eager for adventure, and a fast smile that flashed from her face. When people saw her lively and impulsive spirit, they thought her name, which meant quick thinking, suited her well.” (pg. 2). Through this description, Minli is brought to life.
The story also displays a “strong, credible plot” that “examines issues of the human condition” (Tunnell, et al., 2016, p. 123). Minli is the hero in this story, who goes on an adventure to change her families fortune. Minli being from a poor family and village, where her parents work hard, fight, and generally seem unhappy with their situation, are all aspects of the human condition. Her father loves to tell her stories, stories Minli loves to hear even though her mother “never quite approved of Ba’s stories” (p. 7), and these stories act as a sort of glue the holds the plot together and moves the adventure along. Each story gives the reader background information about the settings and characters.
According to Tunnell and colleagues (2016), there are six basic motifs to fantasy stories: magic, other worlds (secondary worlds), good versus evil, heroism, special character types, and fantasy objects (pp. 126-129) and Where the Mountain Meets the Moon features something from each motif.
There are elements of magic with dragons born from paintings, the Book of Fortune, strings of destiny, moon rain, dragon pearls, the paper of happiness, and magical rope bridges built from a kite string leading far above the clouds.
The whole story is sort of set in other worlds as Minli journeys to find the Old Man of the Moon. There’s the Fruitless Mountain, the Dragon Gate that is the “entryway to the sky” (p. 92), the City of Bright Moonlight, the Inner City where the King lives, the Village of the Moon Rain where seed rain falls from the sky each night, and Never-Ending Mountain.
There is definitely good versus evil with the selfish Magistrate Tiger that abuses his power and punishes those that he believes have wronged or tricked him. There’s also the angry and destructive Green Tiger, the spirit of the magistrate, that has poisonous teeth and also seeks to punish all that have wronged him. There are greedy monkeys that won’t let anyone near the peach trees because they want all the peaches for themselves. The Green Tiger is defeated by the twins Da-Fu and A-Fu. The Jade Dragon was in control of the clouds and stopped giving the villagers rain when she felt they were being ungrateful of her power to gift them rain, thus giving way to the Fruitless Mountain and the despair and poverty of the village where Minli now lives. The darkness of the Fruitless Mountain ends when Minli returns from her journey and reunites Jade Dragon with one of her dragon children. One of the main good versus evil themes is with the person versus self, Minli goes on this journey to discover that she had good fortune all along. Family and gratitude is far greater than endless wealth.
Minli is the hero in this story and she follows the circular pattern with her journey, “ending where it began” (p. 127). She begins her journey at the village near the Fruitless Mountain, travels far and wide away of the safety of her home and parents, until she finds the Old Man on the Moon, then returns back where she started, bringing good fortune to her family and village. On her journey, Minli overcomes challenges she never imagined or knew she could overcome, discovers the power of friendship, matures with her new understanding of what “fortune” and “happiness” really mean, and finally returns home.
There are many special character types in this story. The goldfish merchant sells her a talking goldfish that invites her on her quest. She meets the dragon that cannot fly that becomes a dear friend and protector to her on her journey. She meets the boy and his water buffalo that also end up being friends and protectors to her. The friend of the boy with the water buffalo is revealed at the end to be the Goddess of Weaving. She knew where Minli could find the King. Then there is the Old Man of the Moon who controls the strings of destiny and holds the Book of Fortune. He is the one that answers all the questions, but he only answers one question every 99 years.
The fantasy objects are weaved throughout and overlap with the elements of magic, the Book of Fortune and the strings of fate for example. There’s the talking lion statues that are the Guardians of the City. There is also the dragon’s pearl that Minli removes so that the dragon can finally fly, allowing them to make the journey back home and thus reuniting the dragon with its mother, the Jade Dragon. The dragon gifts the pearl to Minli and is apparently “worth the Emperor’s entire fortune” (p. 231).
Critical Literacy
As McLaughlin and Devoogd point out, taking the critical stance while reading is an additional stance to take next to the efferent and aesthetic stances (2004). Students can be in more than one stance at a time, so not only could they be viewing the literature by how it makes them feel, aesthetic, or by gathering the facts, they could be thinking critically about what the author’s purpose was for writing the literature and who’s voices are present or missing. Where the Mountain Meets the Moon would be a great book to use for students to practice being critics and using their background knowledge to make connections between the book and the world around them.
Books erase bias, they make the uncommon common, and the mundane exotic. A book makes all cultures universal.”
Grace Lin – TedxTalk
Disrupting the commonplace and Social Justice Action
In Where the Mountain Meets the Moon, Minli is faced with the reality that she is from a poor family in a poor village. Minli and her Ma and Ba all work in the rice fields all day, but still barely have enough rice to feed them. What Minli and her parents too, need to learn, through her adventure to change her family’s fortune, is gratitude and thankfulness for what they do have. Students may take some time to discuss the implications of poverty and how being poor can affect people. The villagers all work hard, yet they are still poor. Does this happen in real life? Why does this happen? What does poverty look like in our society? How can we lessen the effects of poverty? What if we were all more hospitable to each other like the boy and the water buffalo were to Minli, or the King when he magical grew a peach tree in the middle of the town for all the people to be able to eat peaches?
Interrogating multiple view points
This is also a great book for students to “see” from many different perspectives as well as how all the characters are so interconnected. The main story is told from Minli’s perspective. Through this, the reader can jump right into her mind and know firsthand how each step in her journey affects her and makes her feel. Minli matures over her journey and discovers the power of friendship, gratitude, and selflessness and that all of this was already inside her. Another perspective is that of the Asian experience, which Grace Lin makes a point to add to all of her work since it is one she never saw represented while growing up and one she needed. Grace Lin grew up trying to ignore the Asian part of herself because of the lack of representation. It is very important for children to find themselves in books, like a mirror, as well as for cultural outsiders to see other cultural experiences represented, like a window (Lin, 2016).
The reader also gets to see life from her parents’ perspectives. They can see how they react to being poor. Minli’s mom comes off as bitter and the thought of their situation is always at the forefront of her mind. Her father seems to not let their poor situation affect him too much and he tries to enjoy the time he has with his daughter through storytelling. The reader gets to experience how the parents handle their daughter being missing. First they are distraught and try to find her, but then they learn to have faith in their daughter to return home, but of course they are still very worried. “‘But now,’ Ba said, ‘I think, perhaps, the word was faith.'” (referring to the Story of the Paper of Happiness, p. 151).
Through the many stories in the book that show how everyone and their actions are interconnected and how they affect each other, the reader also gains a look from the perspective of the Jade Dragon, the Magistrate Tiger, Wu Kang, the Old Man on the Moon, and many others. Every thing that happens in each story shows how connected everything is. This would be a great aspect for students to grapple with. Through this they could discover the power their actions hold. Everything we do could affect someone else in a way we might not have expected. For example, in the Story of Wu Kang, he was a “very lucky” man with a beautiful wife and healthy children, yet he was never satisfied, never content. His endless journey to always do something more or better led him to the Old Man on the Moon where he will stay, forever chopping down the same tree, until he learns to be content. We learn later the the tree he chops down is the source of the moon seeds that rain down on the Moon Rain Village, which grow into the trees that provided them with the Well Tea that cures the poison from the Green Tiger. The connects with these stories go on and on.
Sociopolitical Issues
Students can definitely read this book and think about what the author might want them to learn from it. By putting themselves in all the different characters’ shoes they can experience both the good and the bad, the greed and selfishness, as well as the gratitude, kindness, and thankfulness. Certain characters hold more power over many than others; the Jade Dragon, the Magistrate Tiger, the King, and the Old Man of the Moon. The readers can ponder how each of these characters choose to use their power and the affects this has on others, then compare with people in our society that hold more power over many and how they choose to use it. The Magistrate Tiger is the main character with power whose actions are most selfish and silence the most people.
References
Book Friends Forever Podcast (n.d.) Retrieved from https://www.hachetteaudio.com/imprint/hachette-audio/page/book-friends-forever/
Lin, G. (2016). The Windows and Mirrors of Your Child’s Bookshelf. Tedx Talks. Retrieved from https://youtu.be/_wQ8wiV3FVo
Lin, G. (2009). Where the Mountain Meets the Moon. New York, NY: Hachette Book Group.
Tunnell, M. O., Jacobs, J. S., Young, T. A., & Bryan, G. (2016). Children’s Literature, Briefly (6th ed.). Upple Saddle River, NJ: Pearson.
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