The Serpent's Children (Golden Mountain Chronicles) - Softcover

Yep, Laurence

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0064406458 ISBN 13: 9780064406451

Publisher: HarperCollins, 1996

Synopsis

When villagers call Cassia and her brother, Foxfire, "the serpent's children," they mean it as an insult. But to Cassia it is an honor, for legend says that once a serpent sets her mind on something, she never gives up. And in a time when famine, drought, and violence mark her family's life, Cassia has nothing less than survival to fight for.

Their father is a revolutionary, determined to free China from invaders. Foxfire, certain he'll find a mountain of gold, flees to a faraway land. Cassia will need all of her strength and wisdom to keep her family together, and to prove that she is truly the serpent's child.

About this title

About the Author:

Laurence Yep is the acclaimed author of more than sixty books for young people and a winner of the Laura Ingalls Wilder Award. His illustrious list of novels includes the Newbery Honor Books Dragonwings and Dragon's Gate; The Earth Dragon Awakes: The San Francisco Earthquake of 1906, a Texas Bluebonnet Award nominee; and The Dragon's Child: A Story of Angel Island, which he cowrote with his niece, Dr. Kathleen S. Yep, and was named a New York Public Library's "One Hundred Titles for Reading and Sharing" and a Bank Street College of Education Best Children's Book.

Mr. Yep grew up in San Francisco, where he was born. He attended Marquette University, graduated from the University of California at Santa Cruz, and received his PhD from the State University of New York at Buffalo. He lives in Pacific Grove, California, with his wife, the writer Joanne Ryder.

From AudioFile:

Why did those nineteenth-century Chinese villagers cross perilous seas to endure shame and hardship in California? Cassia and her family show us why. With her mother dead and her father off fighting the demons who invaded China with their opium, this teenager and her brother must fend off starvation, slavery, and possibly prostitution. But their mother has told them that they are children of the serpent, and children of the serpent never give up. [Laurence Yep] compellingly relates Cassia's struggle. Her voice is intense with drama and mystery, urging the reader through the primitive, poverty-stricken world of the past to the deceptively attractive "golden mountain" that her brother has found in California. The worlds are far apart in time and custom, but [Yep] helps us bridge them. P.E.F. (c) AudioFile, Portland, Maine

About this edition

• Publisher: HarperCollins
• Publication date: 1996
• ISBN 10: 0064406458
• ISBN 13: 9780064406451
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 288