The Year of the Dog

There are a lot of books available that talk about the every day life of Native Americans, and African-Americans, and then other Caucasian families, but what if there isn't a book about Chinese/Taiwanese-Americans? Then the book The Year of the Dog written by Grace Lin is written!

This story starts off with Grace and her family celebrating the Chinese New Year. The new year is the Year of the Dog, and because she was born in the Year of the Tiger, this year is supposed to be her lucky year. Grace wants to become rich and figure out her talent in the upcoming year, but she doesn't know how. As she progresses through the year of the dog, she slowly learns more about herself as a Chinese/Taiwanese-American.

There are different times that she comes to realize that she isn't like all the other kids in her school where she and her sister are the only Chinese-American students in her school, until a new girl named Melody starts at her school and she and Grace become fast friends. They together deal with the trials of being Chinese-American whether it is  realizing that Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz wasn't Chinese, or that Grace doesn't know Chinese or Taiwanese to be able to speak with other Chinese/Taiwanese kids at a camp.

Through each trial though, Grace learns more about herself and soon learns to accept that she isn't fully Chinese/Taiwanese, and that she isn't fully American, but that she is Chinese/Taiwanese-American. Once she can accept this about herself she comes to realize what her talent is and what she wants to do with her life. Write books.

What I didn't realize until almost the end of the book is that the author is writing about herself, but it isn't autobiographical. She used her own life as inspiration for her story. She wrote this story because it was a book she wished she had when she was growing up. This is such a fun book and I would definitely recommend it as a book that a Chinese/Taiwanese-American girl should read because there aren't many of these type of books out there that Chinese/Taiwanese-American girls.