The Nine Moons of Han Yu and Luli by Karnina Yan Glaser

 Luli lives in New York's China Town in the 1930's.  Her family's restaurant used to be crowed every day, but the stock market crash of 1929 changed all that, and now her family is at risk of losing not only their restaurant but their home. Luli tries to think of more ways to bring people to their restaurant, and decides to turn the storage room into a mini museum of some Chinese art that her uncle has collected. More than a century earlier, Han Yu's family comes down with a terrible plague. In a desperate effort to find a cure, 11- year-old Han Yu decides to travel the Silk Road with no one to help him but a host of animals, including a mystical tiger, that are strangely connected to him.  As the story of Luli and Han Lu play out in alternating chapters, both children test the limits of the courage to change the fates of their families. 

I put this on hold when the Newbery awards were announced back in January.  This was an Honor winner.  I was expecting to like is as much as "The Many Assassinations of Samir, the Seller of Dreams" by Daniel Nayeri that won an Honor last year, but I did not. I think the problem with this book is that it tried to tell two stories. Though both of the stories were interesting, and the protagonists were likeable spunky children, putting both stories together slowed the pace of the book. It was clever how Glaser wove the two stories together around the central image of the silk fragment, but about 1/2 way through I got bored and had to increase the playback speed to get through it. Maybe I just wasn't in the mood this week. Still, I would recommend reading the Nayeri book over this one, especially for children, since the Nayeri book is half the length, and more exciting. (432 p. 2025)