Grace Lin, the lauded author and illustrator—and winner of a Newbery Honor, a Caldecott Honor, and a Children’s Literature Legacy Award—is back with her first novel in nine years, “The Gate, the Girl, and the Dragon.” It’s a fantastical tale that melds ancient Chinese folklore with the modern as it follows a stone lion cub and young girl as they try to open a portal for the spirits.
Grace also loves libraries.
“When I was a child, my parents didn’t understand extracurricular activities, like soccer or anything like that, but they did understand the library,” she told American Libraries this summer. “After dinner, we used to go to the big public library [in New Hartford, New York] and just spend the evening there. The children’s section was in the basement, and there were rows and rows and rows of books. I remember just walking through, trailing my hands over the spines, and feeling like all the characters in those books were my good friends. My parents were immigrants. They weren’t sure how to blend in, and we were the only Asian family in town at that time. But I felt that the books were always welcoming.”
A welcoming nature, inclusiveness, and desire to tell the stories of marginalized communities have led many books to be challenged and banned throughout the United States by a small, but vocal minority of people who want to silence “other” voices. Grace is an outspoken critic of these practices, having experienced it directly.
“I have some wonderful friends who create beautiful books, but the way they’re getting targeted is so scary and aggressively horrible…. However, I don’t want to say that it’s been easy for authors like me either,” she said.
“[My book] Dim Sum for Everyone! was among those under review in Florida [in 2022 under House Bill 1467], which chills classroom discussions on race and racism. It shows how off-the-deep-end the banning has gotten. The teachers and librarians I’ve spoken to are scared, and their jobs are already not easy…. If they’re scared to share books as noncontroversial as Dim Sum for Everyone!, where are we? And what does that say to the kids? We’re in a hard place.”
ALA is here to help fight these struggles, which along with book bans and challenges include the Trump administration’s elimination of library funding and the Institute of Museum and Library Services and librarians having their livelihoods and lives threatened for simply doing their jobs.
You can help us in this fight by becoming an ALA Supporter.
Before Grace took the stage at the American Library Association’s (ALA) 2025 Annual Conference in Philadelphia, she recorded a special message proudly supporting ALA. Please join Grace and stand up for libraries and the freedom to read by becoming an ALA Supporter, too.
Become a Supporter
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Photo: Grace Lin at the 2025 ALA Annual Conference in Philadelphia. Courtesy of EPNAC.
