Tuesday, June 17, 2008

A book by Laurence Yep "Dream Soul"




I chose to read the book Dream Soul by Laurence Yep for this book review. It is a chapter book but it is not that long so I thought I would have it read in a couple of days, however I did not. I keep putting this book down in order to do other things that were more interesting to me because I had trouble getting into the story. There really is not much substance to this book in my opinion. It is mainly about a Chinese family that lives in America and the children want to celebrate Christmas.

There are three children in this Chinese family and they all long to fit in with their American friends. They hope to do this by celebrating Christmas and being able to talk about it when winter break is over and they go back to school. For as long as they have lived in America, they have had to explain to their friends that they do not celebrate the Christmas holiday because it is not Chinese, but they are sick of being different.

The children make a deal with their father that they can have Christmas as long as they are good and do not get into trouble in the weeks coming up to Christmas. The kids all try very hard, but this is a very hard bet to keep.

The majority of the book is about the children trying their best to behave and please their parents so that they can have Christmas, but it just was not that interesting to me. It was not mentioned in the book at all that Christmas is a Christian celebration and that the Chinese do not observe this religion. Instead, Christmas was about the decorations and the presents, which I think is very superficial.

I do not have anything against people celebrating Christmas without observing the true meaning of December 25, but it was ignored in this book completely and I think that it might have played a significant role in this Chinese family’s decision to not want to celebrate such a holiday.

In the midst of this story, the Chinese father gets sick and the oldest daughter calls on one of the Chinese folktales to help him get better. The tale is about a person having 2 souls and one getting lost. She thinks that this is what happens to her father so she is determined to find his lost soul to help him recover. This tale seemed silly to me and I had trouble following her path as she tried to rescue his lost soul. I may be too westernized but this “story” was pure make-believe to me and it seemed very far-fetched. I know this is a work of fiction so I cannot say that I expected something different to occur, but I had trouble believing what was happening.

Overall I did not enjoy this book and I would have trouble recommending it to someone else. It has a reading level of 4.8, but I do not think it would interest a fifth grader. I might encourage someone from another culture to read this book in order to compare one’s own lifestyle with that of the Chinese and the Americans in Dream Soul , but I do not really think the book would be applicable to many readers because it is set in 1927 and times are very different now.


Laurence Yep has written many books both for children and young adults. Some of the books he has written are Dragonwings, Dragon's Gate, Sweetwater, The Magic Paintbrush and The Earth Dragon Awaits to name a few. Most of his books deal with some aspect of the Chinese culture because that is what he is familiar with. I personally have not read any of his other books so I am unable to compare and contrast his works, but many of them are award winners which makes me curious to read them.

Images courtesy of: http://www.fantasticfiction.co.uk/y/laurence-yep/dream-soul.htm

1 comment:

Unknown said...

i am doing a book report for school and we are supposed to do it on a book that we have recently read so i am doing it on the book dream soul but i have lost the book and i really would like to do it on this book but i need to know if the father had died and if the kids got to celebrate christmas because i had forgotten. so it would be great if you could please answer those two questions