Paul Yee

When his father kicks him out of the house, Ray Liu struggles on the streets of Toronto.

Money Boy

Ghost Train

Harvey Chan

Dead Man's Gold and Other Stories

A Chinese peasant girl, Choon-yi, is visited by the ghost of her father, who tells her to paint the "fire car" that rides the rails he helped build, and her painting comes alive to transport home the souls of the laborers who died while building the railway.

Judi Chan

The fairy tales and folklore of China-like stories told throughout the ages everywhere-bring the fantastic world of ghosts and demons into our everyday lives. So it is not surprising that food makes an appearance here-each story is followed by a simple recipe by Judi Chan. This creative book folds fairy tales into a cookbook of kid-friendly recipes. Most of the thirteen fairy tales included in this book have been adapted and retold from original sources by master storyteller Paul Yee-a few are original to this text, but remain true to the spirit of the collection. They are accompanied by an introduction by Jane Yolen, one of our most celebrated folklorists. The splendid illustrations by Shaoli Wang bring the collection to life.

A Literary Cookbook

Chinese Fairy Tale Feasts

Maylin cooks delicious meals every day in her father's restaurant, but her lazy brothers take all the credit. One day a contest is held to honor the visiting governor of South China, and Maylin's brothers decide to pass off her cooking as their own. But when neither they nor the governor can replicate Maylin's wonderful dish, they all learn that there's more to the art of good cooking than the right ingredients. Paul Yee's charming text and Harvey Chan's dramatic watercolors transport the reader to another time and culture in this engaging tale.

A Delicious Tale

Roses Sing on New Snow

Eighteen year old, Canadian-born, Kwok-ken Wong fights racism and poverty in Vancouver during the 1930's Depression.

Breakaway

Illustrated by Grace Lin The story begins at the turn of the 19th century in South China, where Yenyee and her family live. One night, her fisherman father vanishes in a ferocious storm at sea. But it is not only her father that she loses that day. Yenyee also feels betrayed by the ocean, a friend she has trusted all her life, and betrayed by her family, who send her across the Pacific to the New World to be a servant. In a strange new place, Yenyee must overcome her loneliness to find strength in the ocean once more. In full-colour. Ages 4-8.

The Jade Necklace

When her father is lost at sea during a typhoon and her family no longer has enough to eat, Yenyee travels to Vancouver as a servant, across the ocean which she feels betrayed her.

The incredible sacrifices made by Chinese workers building the transcontinental railway are revealed in this powerful novel. Heen's father and grandfather have brought their family in China to the brink of ruin with their gambling habits. To solve their money troubles, Heen and his father come to Canada to build the railway — a decision plagued by disaster. The living conditions provided for workers are wretched and work on the railway is excruciating. Transporting tons of gravel and working in tunnels about to be dynamited proves to be deadly for many of his co-workers. Soon the friction between the Chinese workers and the whites, who barely acknowledge these deaths, reaches a fevered pitch. As an added stress, Heen's father has found some men to gamble with, which puts all of their earnings at risk. Heen's only solace is his journal, where his chilling observations of the injustice and peril heaped upon the workers serve as an important testament to this dramatic era in Canadian history.

I Am Canada: Blood and Iron

Afua Cooper

Jean Little

Kit Pearson

Brian Doyle

Shelley Tanaka

Rukhsana Khan

Ruby Slipperjack

Irene N Watts

In these eleven original stories, characters bravely face the challenges of settling into a new life. In this wonderful new short story anthology, eleven of Canada's top children's authors contribute stories of immigration, displacement and change, exploring the frustration and uncertainty those changes can bring. Told in first-person narratives, this collection features a diverse cast of boys and girls, each one living at a different point in Canada's vast landscape and history. With unforgettable protagonists - such as Miriam, a Warsaw-ghetto survivor, now reunited with her family in Montreal; Wong Joe-on, a young Chinese immigrant who faces racism in a small Saskatchewan town; and Insy, an Ojibwe girl who makes her first trip to a "white" town in Northern Ontario - young readers will be moved by the opportunities and difficulties that these characters face, as each one ponders what it means to be Canadian, and struggles to fit in. Hoping for Home includes stories by Jean Little, Kit Pearson, Brian Dowle, Paul Yee, Irene N. Watts, Ruby Slipperjack, Afua Cooper, Rukhsana Khan, Marie-Andrée Clermont, Lillian Boraks-Nemetz and Shelley Tanaka.

Stories of Arrival

Dear Canada: Hoping for Home

Simon Ng

A collection of eight stories chronicling the experiences of Chinese immigrants in the New World presents stories of triumph, disappointment, success, struggle, loss, and adventure.

Tales from Gold Mountain

Written by Paul Yee, a third-generation Chinese-Canadian in search of his own roots as well as those of the community, Saltwater City brings the perceptions of a previously diffident community to its own history. A text resonant with often painful first-person recollections combines with 200 photographs, most reproduced for the first time, to form a chronological portrait of the community from its earliest beginnings to the present. With the assimilation of its people into the mainstream of Canadian life following World War II, Saltwater City, as early Chinese immigrants called the community, was threatened, but changes in attitude, government policy, and the opening of diplomatic relations with China instead caused a renaissance. Now, Vancouver's Chinese community totals over 150,000 people, enjoys considerable political and financial influence and has matured beyond recognition into one of Canada's most successful ethnic enclaves.

An Illustrated History of the Chinese in Vancouver

Saltwater City

The story of a young Chinese girl who arrives in North America only to discover that her father has died building the railway. This powerful, unforgettable and multi-award-winning tale is based on the lives of the Chinese who settled on the west coast of North America in the early 1900s. Left behind in China by her father, who has gone to North America to find work, Choon-yi has made her living by selling her paintings in the market. When her father writes one day and asks her to join him, she joyously sets off, only to discover that he has been killed. Choon-yi sees the railway and the giant train engines that her father died for, and she is filled with an urge to paint them. But her work disappoints her until a ghostly presence beckons her to board a train where she meets the ghosts of the men who died building the railway. She is able to give them peace by returning their bones to China where they were born. Ghostly, magical and yet redeeming, this tale by Paul Yee is superbly illustrated by Harvey Chan. Correlates to the Common Core State Standards in English Language Arts: CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RL.3.7 Explain how specific aspects of a text's illustrations contribute to what is conveyed by the words in a story (e.g., create mood, emphasize aspects of a character or setting)

In Vancouver of 1907, thirteen-year-old Bing-Wing Chan must conquer his fear of ghosts as his father's gambling debts force him to dig for human bones in a graveyard and then work as a houseboy in a haunted house.

The Bone Collector's Son

Presents nine stories about Chinese immigrant teenagers in Canada, and how they cope with the inevitable conflict between what their families expect of them and the pop culture that surrounds them.

What Happened This Summer

After the destruction of the San Francisco earthquake of 1906, Jackson Leong is haunted by the ghost of his brother who died in the quake, as well as that of a mysterious woman.

The Secret Keepers

For more than thirty years, Paul Yee has written about his Chinese-Canadian heritage in award-winning books for young readers as well as adult non-fiction. Here, in his first work of fiction for adults, he takes us on a harrowing journey into a milestone event of Canadian history: the use of Chinese coolies to help build the Canadian Pacific Railway in British Columbia in hazardous conditions. After the CPR is built in 1885, Yang Hok, a former coolie, treks along the railway to return his half-Chinese/half-Native son to the boy's mother where he confronts the conflicts arising from road-building among the Chinese and Native peoples. Hok's guide on the often perilous trip, Sam Bing Lew, also of mixed Chinese-Native blood, urges Hok to take his son to China, while Hok has dreams of finding fortune in America. The two men agree on little, as many issues fester between Chinese and Natives at a time when both races were disdained as inferior by whites ("redbeards"). This far-reaching novel crackles with the brutal, visceral energy of the time—a period marked by contraband, illegal gambling, disfigurement, and death. It also depicts the bawdy world of Chinese "bachelors," whose families remained in China while they worked in Canada, and who enjoyed more freedom to live their lives without restraint. Yang Hok is not an easy man to like; but through the blood and sweat of his experience, he aspires to become the "superior man" he knows he should be. Boldly frank and steeped in history, A Superior Man paints a vivid portrait of the experience of the Chinese in North America in the 19th century. Paul Yee's twenty-seven books for young people include the Governor General's Award-winning Ghost Train. This is his first novel for adults.

Paul Yee

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