The Earth Dragon Awakes: The San Francisco Earthquake of 1906

Title: The Earth Dragon Awakes: The San Francisco Earthquake of 1906

Author: Laurence Yep

Publisher: New York: Harper Trophy, 2008

ISBN: 978-0-06-000846-8

Summary: Two friends, Henry and Chin, live through the San Francisco Earthquake of 1906. The earthquake and resulting fires take all their material possessions, but not their families, not their heroes, and not each other. And not the umbrellas.

Critical Analysis: Henry and Chin are boys connected not only because Henry’s family employs Chin’s father as a houseboy, but also through a love of penny-dreadfuls and a yearning for excitement. They get both a dreadful and exciting event when the San Francisco Earthquake of 1906 literally rocks their hometown. However, another character drives the novel—the earth itself, described in Chin’s Chinatown neighborhood as the Earth Dragon.  It is his shaking that causes the earthquake, and it stands to reason that the great fires that sweep through the city in its aftermath are its fiery breath. However, the earth is not personified; Yep explains tectonic plate movement in a way that draws tension to the book as well as to the earth underneath San Francisco.

Yep’s novel is written for young children beginning chapter books. The sentences are short, the chapters are short, and the words are simple. Each chapter begins with a date, time, and place as an orientation. The Earth Dragon Awakes is an adventure novel with lots of action verbs, lots of movement, and just enough characterization to keep the action going. You do not look for deep messages or societal conflicts in this novel. The conflicts are there, but the third person narrator is distinctly child-like in his view, not focusing on details that would reveal any underlying concerns. The theme of this book is discovering heroes. Whereas previous to the earthquake Henry and Chin depended on cheap novels about lawmen and explorers for their heroes, the earthquake reveals real heroes in their parents and neighbors.

Author Laurence Yep’s reputation for well-researched novels continues in The Earth Dragon Awakes. He includes photographs of the fires and aftermath at the end of the book, another reminder that this terrible event is real. His captions under the photos describe the locations in which the photos were taken and where Chin and Henry’s families’ connections to those places. The afterword of The Earth Dragon Awakes continues the story of the quake in an informational text and his personal experiences with more recent quakes in the area. Yep includes a bibliography of research books and reputable websites for learning about the earthquake.

Awards:

2008 Laura Ingalls Wilder Award

Texas Bluebonnet Award Nominee

Newbery Honor Author

Reviews:

ALA Booklist: “Provides a ‘you are there’ sense of immediacy and will appeal to readers who enjoy action-packed survival stories.”

School Library Journal: "Its ‘natural disaster’ subject is both timely and topical, and Yep weaves snippets of information on plate tectonics and more very neatly around his prose.”

Footage of the 1906 San Francisco Earthquake:

Review created for Texas Woman’s University course LS 5603.21