At the turn of the 20th century, Chinese immigrants in California were plagued by prejudice, violence, poverty, and exclusionary laws. Dragonwings tellsthe story of eight-year-old Moon Shadow, who arrives in San Francisco from China to live with his father, Windrider. In China, Windrider was known for crafting beautiful kites, but now he does laundry and dreams of building a flying machine. As Moon Shadow adapts to the strange new world, he gains a new friend, learns survival skills, and makes a bold move to help his father realize his dreams.
Like most stories based on real history, Dragonwings includes some difficult topics and is best for mature readers. But it's full of lessons for all ages about the fusion of east-west, old-new, and below-above. It's not about division, but unity: sharing the best of one's nature, history, values, culture, dreams, and understanding with another.
There are many ideas in this Hands-on Fun section—don't feel you have to do them all! Go with whatever works best for you and your kids. If you want to focus on a particular teaching point, our Takeaway Topics section can help you narrow down the activity options. And you can enhance discussions during any activity with audiovisual aids from Learning Links or story objects from Prop Ideas.
In our workshops, we do all the activities on this page, in order of the story's narrative arc. You might find our narrative arc worksheet helpful for sequencing your activities, teaching the important concept of the arc, and helping kids learn how Laurence Yep put Dragonwings together.
Dragonwings demands a kite-making project, for so many reasons! Not only is Moon Shadow’s dad a master kite-maker, but so was Laurence Yep’s dad. Kite-making and kite-flying are important plot points, of course, but more importantly, Moon Shadow’s description of kite-flying also applies to life-living. The thrill of the kite leaping out of Mother’s hands, the lessons to be learned about riding the winds, the new heights gained by becoming strong and smart — what a beautiful metaphor!
INSPIRATION
But Mother made sure that I knew at least one important thing about him: He was a maker of the most marvelous kites. Everyone in the village said he was a master of his craft, and his kites were often treasured by their owners like family heirlooms. -Ch. 1
One was a sharply climbing swallow kite that was hard to get up, but there was nothing as fast as the swallow once it was up. The swallow swooped down with the slightest flick of the wrist or soared skyward with the tiniest jerk of the string. There was a large, long cater- pillar kite, too, that took even longer to get up than the swallow, but once it was in the sky, it would stay forever, crawling back and forth over the clouds. -Ch. 1
This project also represents the gift Windrider gives Moon Shadow on their first night at home together in Chinatown:
“Thank you, Father,” I said. I wanted to tell him about all the marvelous times I had had flying his kites, but I did not know how.
Father rumpled my hair affectionately. “You’re welcome, boy. They gave you things for your body. I gave you something for your soul.” -Ch. 1
design patterns from template (included in our printables)
DIRECTIONS
In preparation for this project, read Moon Shadow’s description of kite-flying (Chapter 1) to the kids.
1. Draw the shape. Fold the top corners down first, and cut them along the fold lines. Use a ruler and pencil to draw the bottom edges as shown, then cut on the lines.
2. Cut and fold. Cut out the kite shape, then fold the edges under and tape them down.
3. Trace. Turn the kite over, place a design stencil underneath, and trace the design in black marker.
4. Color. Fill in with watercolor.
5. Make the braces. Measure the bamboo against the kite and trim one length to fit just inside the vertical points of the diamond, and another inside the horizontal. Then tape the bamboo into place as a cross.
6. Add the string. Connect each end of a piece of string to the ends of the horizontal crossbeam, leaving a little bit of slack. Tie another, long piece of string to the center of THAT string. This will be the string you hold to fly your kite.
7. Add the tail. Cut a length of red ribbon or lightweight emergency tape about 1.5x the length of the kite, and tape it to the bottom point. This will be the tail — like the one Windrider attached to the glider at the beach. Write Lefty’s poem (or your own, from the creative writing worksheet) on the tail.
FOR DISCUSSION
Talk about how Moon Shadow's description of kite flying might also apply to life, and ask for examples from his own:
If flying a kite is like living your life, what might the string represent? (Moon Shadow said that at his kite’s highest, he would lose sight of the string — but of course, it was always there...like family!
What about the tail? What is it there for, and how might that same idea be important in life? (A ballast, a way of holding steady, not skittering all over the sky; the poem can be something profound that you tell or read to yourself when you're "headed down.")
What does it mean to "rise above"? (The metaphoric meaning is of not letting negative people or circumstances bother you, or lead you to poor choices)
What does it mean to "soar to new heights"? (To learn new things, to achieve new goals, to gain new skills, to be somehow better or more accomplished than before)
How to fly your kite: Ask a friend to hold your kite for you until a breeze comes. The wind should be coming toward you, not blowing from behind. When you feel the wind, start to run and throw your kite up into the air. Have patience – if at first you don’t succeed, fly, fly again! (And bring some supplies and tape with you, in case you need to make adjustments or repairs).
BookBites is the part of our literary experience when we get to “taste the story.” We choose a food right out of the book, and it has to meet at least one criterion:
it’s important to a plot point
it has thematic significance
it’s unfamiliar for reasons of culture, era, or location
For a (non-scaly) bite of Dragonwings, we recreated the beach picnic shared by Moon Shadow, Windrider, Robin, and Miss Whitlaw. Gingersnaps, hot tea, and steamed dumplings gave us a delicious taste of this cross-cultural scene. We served the dumplings with chopsticks, and pretended we had purchased them in the Tang people’s town that morning. For our tea, we chose the jasmine tea that Moon Shadow had brought to Miss Whitlaw:
She put water on to boil and then sat down across from me and picked at the tea until she could hold up one of the small white, delicate blossoms. “Isn’t that a lovely idea. Flowers in your tea.”
(In another workshop, to replicate Moon Shadow's gift to Miss Whitlaw, we gave each child a wooden box with a golden dragon on top, each box holding a bag of flowery jasmine tea.The golden dragon label is in our printables. We also gave each child a plain white teacup and had them mark the Chinese sign for "east" on one side and "west" on the other, with a Sharpie, and then use the cup for their tea.)
We topped off our “picnic” with ginger chews, a treat Moon Shadow enjoyed.
While we nibbled we listened to traditional Chinese music played with traditional instruments, and watched slideshows and videos of Chinatown in the early 1900s, like the one below. See our Learning Links section for more options.
For this east-meets-west activity, we fused Moon Shadow's memory of the sunset-colored Pearl River in China with his experience of a San Francisco sunset; he shared both of those shared with his new friends, Miss Whitlaw and Robin. It's an art project helps kids get their hands on the idea that we're really all sharing one ocean, one earth, one form--and that our human needs and dreams are often identical.
The sunset was beautiful that day. The sun was a bright orange disc hovering over the sea, and the sunlight glittered on the surface like a web of light, or lace that ever changed its pattern. Clouds were coming in from the ocean now, and they were tinted a bright scarlet red as they bordered the sun; but the farther away they got, the more they showed a deep solemn purple, and beyond that . . . beyond that purple it was black.
Point out that this shared experience of the sunset tightens the friendship bond between the four of them.
Then, to represent that trans-Pacific bond, have the kids paint the image (in our printables) of a Chinese junk sailing on San Francisco Bay, choosing the colors for the water and sky as described in the excerpts. In other words, the water should be a milky, sunset-red like the Pearl River, and the sky should be a glorious orange-red-purple, as it was that special night on the beach in San Francisco. (The famous bridge on our template wasn't built yet in Moon Shadow's time, but like the Chinese junk, it's an icon of a culture and place.)
While the kids are painting, ask them to name some of the Chinese cultural experiences and items that Moon Shadow and Windrider share with Miss Whitlaw and Robin, and vice versa.
Whenever we share an anecdote and ask the kids “Has that ever happened to you?” we get a room full of wildly waving hands, big eyes, and “oooo oooo ooo me!” Kids (like all people) love finding out that we share experiences! The more we learn about each other, the more we discover how much we have in common, no matter how different we seem at first.
This activity helps kids quickly understand that looking for commonality is a valuable (and lifelong) skill for finding friends and reducing conflict.
Simply have the kids pair up with someone they don’t know well (or you can do this for them). Give each pair a pencil and a piece of paper, and tell them they have ten minutes (or however much time you have) to write down ten experiences they have in common. The more interesting the experiences, the better! (Point out ahead of time that living in the same city isn’t really very interesting.)
Then have volunteer pairs read their lists out loud. Have the rest of the kids raise their hands when they hear something they, too, have experienced. The message: we all have so much more in common than we realize!
Dragonwings is all about flight, and not just through the air. The idea of flight as running from changes to rising above in this beautiful story. Though there is flight from the effects of the Opium Wars in China, and flight from hate and fear in California, Moon Shadow and his father rise above adversity and prejudice by courage, diligence, strength, and intelligence. This is symbolized by Windrider’s actual, physical flights of kites and planes.
One rule of flight applies to both the physical and metaphoric: you can’t rise above if you never get off the ground! This activity lets kids build and create their own way of soaring.
(It's not in these photos, but we have special plane-making paper in our printables--click to see previews.) Have the kids design their own paper airplanes – you can show them some easy tips — and write their names on them. (It's not in these photos, but we have special story-based paper for this in our printables--click to see previews.)
Then have a contest to see whose can fly the farthest. If you like, you can award inexpensive balsa gliders as prizes.
In the mid- to late 1800s, Americans rushing west for gold were new to California themselves, and saw everyone there as a threat to their potential wealth. When there wasn’t as much gold as had been dreamed, miners started looking for jobs and land. The Chinese, who were ten percent of the population by 1852, were seen as competition.
As this story shows, the “demons” were cruel to the Chinese immigrants in San Francisco. Laws were passed in San Francisco to restrict housing and job opportunities for Chinese. Beginning in 1882, the Chinese Exclusion Acts made things so difficult that many Chinatown residents left.
The earthquake and fire of 1906 made things much worse for awhile, but the rebuilding of Chinatown as a tourist attraction, followed by Chinese assistance in World War II, made a big difference in Chinese-American relations. On December 17, 1943, though — forty years to the day since the Wright brothers had taken flight — those anti-Chinese laws were repealed, and Chinese could become citizens.
(There's an excellent short video giving an overview of this history right here; see Learning Links for more videos and info.)
Besides having conversations about these history points, you might have your kids complete our empathy-building worksheet "The Chinese in California." If your kids are older, you might have them break into pairs or groups to find similarities between Laurence Yep's Dragonwings and Lee Chew's true story, which is on our "Truth in Fiction" handout.
A LitWits Kit is a bag or box of supplies you pack up and give to each child right before you begin your "field trip" through the story. You might be doing one-off projects as you read through the book together, or you might do everything in this guide from top to bottom after the book has been read. However you explore this book in LitWitty ways, kids love the anticipation of opening their kit.
If you'd like to build LitWits Kits for your child/ren, you could easily arrange the items in a bag, basket, or story-relevant container. Honestly, it's just as much fun to create a kit as it is to open one! To make it all the more fun, our printables for many books include special "story packaging" for certain activity supplies, including BookBites. Click the button below for a specific list of contents for this book.
This story was recommended to us as adults, by a student's mom. We found it an eye-opening glimpse at our home region's history, but also a beautiful example of cultural fusion. This "learn without knowing it while you're lost in the story" idea is always so valuable to us! So it was an obvious choice for one of our experiential workshops. And it's packed with great takeaway topics, which we're sharing below.
In our workshops, we did our best to make these teaching points tangible, meaningful, and memorable in the kids' hands. It's amazing how much kids can learn while they're "just" having fun!
Happy teaching! Becky and Jenny
Takeaway 1
The Superior Person
From the first page to the last, Dragonwings is all about taking the high road. The characters physically move to higher ground--for instance, Moon Shadow leaves China for the “Golden Mountain,” Windrider leaves the Tang community for the hill on Polk Street, and the father and son climb the Oakland hills to pursue their dream of flight--which takes Windrider even higher, to the sky. But more importantly, they "take the high way" in a figurative sense. By the end of the story, Moon Shadow has become a stronger, smarter person who "rises above"--just like the Confucian "Superior Person" his uncle cites.
Hands-on connections in this guide: “Rising Above” activity, “A Most Marvelous Kite” project, creative writing (letter), kite prop
Who hasn’t been inspired by someone else’s “impossible” feat? The Wright brothers inspired Windrider and thousands of others when their gas-powered airplane flew for twelve seconds on December 17, 1903. We learned a lot about the Wrights, including that those two bicycle mechanics from a little town in Ohio had been inspired by watching buzzards tilt. We never know just who or what will inspire our own great ideas, or encourage us to see them through. We also learn from this story that if you ask the right people (groan), you might shorten the distance between your dream and its realization.
Hands-on connections in this guide:"A Most Marvelous Kite" project, “Rising Above” activity, creative writing (letter), kite prop
Dragonwings gives us a up-close view of racial prejudice and its impact--and an opportunity to talk about the ugly, selfish side of fear, and the destructive power of greed. But just as importantly, it shows us the beautiful things that can happen when people reach out toward each other and give, instead of pushing each other away or trying to take. The understandings of each other that emerge through open-minded, open-hearted sharing can transcend preconceptions and prejudices----as all the central characters in this story discover. Such invaluable reminders for all of us, always!
Hands-on connections in this guide:“Rising Above” activity, BookBites activity, "Sunset Fusion" activity, “Getting It” activity, "Truth in Fiction" activity and worksheets, props that connote Chinese culture, setting handout, history worksheets
Dragonwings is chock-full of other subjects to explore, too--from the physics of flight to the geology of earthquakes to the history of China and more. Scroll down to see our curated Learning Links for more tangential teaching opportunities, and to see how we brought this book and its ideas to life.
Learning Links
Explore these links to supplement your reading experience, research points of interest, and prompt tangential learning opportunities.
When choosing props for our live workshops, we always try to focus on two important categories: props that are unique to the setting, because they help kids understand “what that was like,” and props that are symbolic of themes, because they make big ideas visual and tangible. Both kinds of props generate those wide-eyed, “aha!” moments.
Below is an overview of the display we put together for our live workshop, and under that we've given more details. You could easily have your kids contribute items to a table over time, as the book is being read. Sometimes we create a printable prop; click the button to check the list for this book.
This "Dragonwings" kite represents the cross between Moon Shadow's kite-flying and plane-flying days with his father, the dragon; and it symbolizes Windrider's dream of "rising above" wearing dragonfly wings:
At the Lord’s command, a squad of soldiers brought a set of shimmering wings, shaped like a dragonfly’s, of some thin, transparent stuff stretched over a framework of gold wire. -p. 41
"Money tree"
“Well, it’s as they say, fools and children have all the luck,” he said, but he looked relieved to see us. “So no dragons got you.” -p.177
There were men in long narrow stalls set against the sides of buildings who sold toys and different candies— one a type of sweet but hot-tasting, candied ginger that was a bright orange-red in color. -p. 20 (We couldn't find bright red ginger.)
E. Nesbit book
(Old edition of Five Children and It) “I'll teach you,” Robin said loftily. She put her hand on the stack of E. Nesbit books. “We'll start with these and then when you know English better, you can read these.” -p. 128
“Oh.” Suddenly Robin took the book from her lap and thrust it into my hands. “Here,” she said. “It’s a gift for you.” | It was “The Phoenix and the Carpet” by E. Nesbit. -p. 197
Loose tea
And she poured out two cups of the amber liquid. She sipped it tentatively. I watched her face as she broke into her smile and drank more. At least I had broken her of putting cream and sugar into everything. We drank our tea in a friendly kind of silence... -p. 116
Chinese fan
There isn't a silk fan in the story, but it's a cultural object we happened to have on hand so we brought it anyway. It does represent "cooling off" when you're angry--as the Chinese had such good reason to be! And they'd make a pretty, useful take-home memento for the kids.
Chinese writing
[Father] did not come back until around noon, when he walked solemnly over to Uncle. “I have already written my wife and mother telling them about the trouble last night. I have told them we have to leave the Tang people’s town.” -Ch. 5
We found this sheet of rice paper covered with Chinese letters while walking in the woods, the day before we held this workshop for the very first time. (This happens a lot.)
Housewarming gifts
There were presents, of course. White Deer gave us a little statue of the Buddha-to-be, a happy, laughing god... -p. 92 | [On Polk Street the]first thing [Father] did was to put up a shelf. Then he set Monkey and the Buddha-to-be on it. He placed the cup of soil before them and stuck some incense sticks into the soil and lit them . . . -p. 99
Chinese jacket
“You will not go to Uncle,” Father said. He ran his hand lightly along the lower wing. He stood up suddenly and got his padded jacket from the nail on the wall. -p. 222
We got this jacket from a thrift store.
Paddy hat
[Mother] had to try to do both her own work and Father’s on our small farm. The rice had to be grown from seeds, and the seedlings transplanted to the paddies . . . -p. 2
"The Highwayman" poem
Then Robin recited a poem— “The Highwayman’”—which she had learned to act out. -p. 184
Tin can with coins
And yet the hope that we could start our own little fix-it shop and qualify as merchants steadily grew with the collection of coins in the tin can. p. 149
LitWitty Shareables
Great Quotes
And all of a sudden I saw that if life seems awfully petty most of the time, every now and then there is something noble and beautiful and almost pure that lifts us suddenly out of the pettiness and lets us share in it a little.” *
I only knew that there was a certain rightness in life--the feeling you got when you did something the way you knew you should. * "We see the same thing and yet find different truths," Miss Whitlaw mused. * "We'll draft help. After all, we were put on this earth to help one another," Miss Whitlaw said.
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We're also eager to keep doing it! :) So if you found this guide-page inspiring* and useful, please share it with your social world. And if you buy our printables for this book, thank you. We appreciate you helping us keep the lights on at LitWits!
Happy teaching, Becky and Jenny Sisters, best friends, and partners
*We hope we've inspired you! If you're feeling a little overwhelmed (we hear that sometimes), remember, you're LitWitting whether you do a lot or a little. You can't go wrong! The learning is happening, trust us. Just take the pressure off and do what works for your kids, time, and budget. It's all about inspiring kids to read for fun, so they want to read more—because kids who read more great books learn more great things.
Now get ready for a bunch of wide-eyed kids having “aha!” moments . . . and you, grinning ear to ear because your kids are happily engaged with a great book.
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LitWits teaching ideas and materials for Dragonwings by Laurence Yep Copyright 2014 by LitWits Workshops, LLC. All Rights Reserved.
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