Where the Mountain Meets the Moon

Lin, G. (2009).  Where the Mountain Meets the Moon.  New York, NY:  Little, Brown Books for Young Readers.

This book was ok.  Throughout the book  you get a lot of little stories.  Granted, they help explain the story, but for me it breaks the flow of the story.  I guess I couldn’t relate to the Asian element.  I liked the characters and could understand where they came from.  Such as the fact as being poor, and living in the fruitless mountain.  Luckily, Minli buys a fish and it turns out that it is a magical fish.  Minli decides the fish is another mouth to feed and sets him free.  In doing so, the magical fish tells her how to get to the man on the moon, who can help them change their fortune.  In her travels, she releases a dragon form the water.  The dragon can’t fly and decides to join her to the man on the moon to see why he can’t fly.  She gets a perspective of life.  No matter how poor the people are, they are happy.  She gets to the man on the moon and asks a question for the dragon. She would only ask one question, and she asked for the dragon and not for her.  They fly home, and the dragon gives her a dragon pearl and now they were well off.  There were some nice drawings in the story, and some of the little stories were interesting.  I did  like how they realize that they were already fortunate, they had each other.