A young child explores their biracial identity in The Truth About Dragons by Asian American author Julie Leung, illustrated by Hanna Cha. A woman of Chinese descent beckons her young child to her lap. As she lovingly addresses the child, “bao bei” a term of endearment, she starts a bedtime story about the magic that’s inside and to explain “the truth about dragons.”
Readers are whisked away from the cozy bedroom to a lush autumn forest with the child now adorned with a cape, leather boots, and a lantern. The lyrical narrative eventually leads the child to a cozy cottage with a white old lady. She sits them down surrounded by scents of apple cider and sugar cookies and tells them about dragons. These dragons dwell underground with their hoards of treasure breathing smoke and fire with bat wings.
As the child bids the elderly woman goodbye, the second leg of the journey shows a Chinese bamboo forest. Instead of forest wisps, there are glimpses of nine tail foxes and a lady on the moon with her rabbit companion. The elderly Chinese woman they meet lives in the mountains surrounded by waterfalls. Her house smells of incense and jasmine rice. The dragons she describes have serpent bodies and pearls. Instead of fire, these dragons control rain and rivers.
The child is portrayed embracing both dragons from Eastern and Western mythologies symbolizing his grandmothers’ backgrounds. Leung gently informs readers that outside pressures may try to influence identities, but it is up to the individual to explore and appreciate them all. Cha only elevates the message with lush detailed illustrations filling each page with depth and movement. A marriage of word and art, this title won a Caldecott Honor and an Asian Pacific American Award for Literature.
