Sacrificial lessons

WORLD’s runners-up for children’s nonfiction books of the year in 2023 included Chinese Menu by award-winning author and illustrator Grace Lin. Her latest book, The Gate, the Girl, and the Dragon (Little, Brown Young Readers, 352 pp.), presents a fairly compelling message—but it’s packaged in a sometimes confusing story.

As the spirit of a stone lion, young Jin has humans to watch over. At least, that’s what his father keeps saying. Jin finds watching people to be the “most boring thing ever.” He’d rather be playing zuqiu, the Chinese equivalent of soccer. He’s been perfecting his kick, and he might have a chance at the Golden Goal during the tournament. When his father interrupts his chance at zuqiu fame, Jin kicks the ball furiously, accidentally knocking the Sacred Sphere, a magical relic, into the human world.

Jin catches up to the spinning orb, only to find the gate to the spirit world has closed behind him. With the help of a mysterious girl named Lulu and a worm that purportedly used to be a dragon, Jin must find a way to open the Old City Gate. However, they’re not the only ones looking for the Sacred Sphere, and if they fail to recover it, the spirit world may cease to exist.

With two different worlds converging, there’s a lot going on in the plot. In the beginning of the book, Lin withholds certain details about some of the characters, but there are so many loose ends, it’s sometimes hard to follow along as the author ties them up. Certain plot points also feel underbaked. Lin doesn’t give much context for how the Gongshi (stone spirits) interact with the human world, so readers unfamiliar with Chinese folklore might not understand what’s at stake when the gate between the realms closes.

Parents should know that the story does explore cultural superstitions, suggesting that spirits of mythical creatures and those of dead loved ones can influence the living. But middle grade readers may find Jin to be a relatable hero whose refusal to listen to his father lands him in a heap of trouble. He’s initially quite selfish and doesn’t want to jeopardize his opportunity to go home. In the end, though, he finds fulfillment through self-sacrifice. “Caring for other people is the purpose bestowed on us,” he recalls his father saying.

While Jin does learn valuable lessons and takes some responsibility for his decisions, the moral of the story seems more grounded in Eastern mysticism than in reality: “It didn’t matter whose fault it was. What happened was because of all of them. … Everything is connected.” Ages 8-12