Grace lin’s tasty treat for young readers

Pacy (or Grace, as she is known in her American school in Hartford, Connecticut) travels with her family to Taiwan to celebrate her grandmother’s sixtieth birthday.  The Chinese/Taiwanese American author, Grace Lin, continues her “Pacy” series with this vibrant third novel. 

Pacy and her family arrive in Taiwan at the start of Ghost Month.  Ghost Month, like Halloween or Día de Los Muertos, is a month when the Taiwanese believe the spirits of the dead mingle with the living.  Pit fires burn in remembrance, offerings are left out for hungry ghosts, and the very superstitious go so far as to avoid leaving their laundry out overnight (lest a restless spirit inhabits their clothes.)  Pacy’s adventures include a subterranean encounter with a tabletop fortune teller, chasing a metro pickpocket, and getting lost in the night market.  Along the way, Pacy delights in the flavors of Taiwanese cuisine – dumplings being her clear favorite.

Lin takes the reader through Pacy’s many fish-out-of-water experiences and deftly avoids the exoticism that often infects these types of tales.   The busy markets, the harrowing street crossings, and even the pungent food stalls are regarded with enthusiasm instead of judgement.  Despite Pacy’s rocky start, we find ourselves wishing for the trip to never end—just as Pacy does—by the novel’s conclusion. 

As a parent who seeks literature to read with my daughters, aged five and eight, that features protagonists of color, I am excited to have discovered the works of Grace Lin.  Her prose is lively and specific in the way writing for young readers should be.  The Pacy books are appropriate for the eight to twelve age group.  Lin has also written novels for pre-teens and an early reader series.