The Bone Collector's Son

by Paul Yee

Overview

Fourteen-year-old Bing is upset with his father for forcing him to help him dig up the bones of Chinese men and women in order to send them back to China. After they discover a skeleton without a skull, Ba is haunted by the powerful ghost. Later Bing gets a job as houseboy for a wealthy family, where he finds another ghost haunting the family. Bing is finally able to find out what both ghosts want from the living and rescues his father from impending death.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781896580500
Publisher:	Tradewind Books
Publication date:	09/01/2012
Pages:	176
Product dimensions:	5.25(w) x 8.00(h) x 0.50(d)
Age Range:	9 - 12 Years

About the Author

Paul Yee is one of Canada's finest writers for children. He was raised in Vancouver and has worked in the archives at the Vancouver Museum. He won the Governor General's Literary Award for Children's Literature for Ghost Train. He now lives in Toronto.

Editorial Reviews

This is a book that shows the imaginative power of fiction. It demonstrates that empathy across time and cultures is possible.

The Georgia Straight

A great read-aloud, either at home or in the classroom.

starred review Toronto Star

Yee skillfully contrasts the supernatural with brutal, racial prejudice and the haunted, unsettled yearning of immigrants longing for roots.

Booklist

It's 1907 in Vancouver, British Columbia, and 14-year-old Bing-wing Chan resents and is frightened by having to help his father in his work-digging up bones of the dead to be shipped "home to China for reburial near their ancestors." Partly a mystery in which strange happenings occur after they unearth a skeleton that's missing its skull, and when Bing takes a job as a houseboy outside of Chinatown in a home that appears to be haunted, the story also offers young readers a glimpse into the racism and tough conditions faced by Chinese immigrants at the turn of the century. Interspersed old Chinese ghost tales also add a sense of traditional spiritual beliefs. Basing his story on a riot that erupted on September 7, 1907, when "Vancouver's Asiatic Exclusion League staged a parade to call for an end to Asian immigration into Canada," the author attempts to bring an important period of history to light. However, Yee's intent to convey the overriding anti-Asian sentiment of the times comes at the expense of textured storytelling. (afterword, panoramic view) (Historical fiction. 10-14)

Kirkus Reviews