Pick of the week on girl's teen reading blog

By Susan Perren, Globe and mail, January 17, 2004

"Yee presents an entertaining ghost story. The folkloric atmosphere of Bing’s story is wonderfully accentuated by presentations of other ghost folklore. The plot is brisk, and references to actual historical events, described in a historical afterward, bring authenticity to the setting. [A] good introduction to folklore, and teens looking for a nonthreatening ghost story should be introduced to this novel."—VOYA

Summary The year is 1907 in Chinatown. Bing must help his father, a Chinese gravedigger, who digs up bones to send them back to China, in order to get a proper burial there, according to Chinese custom. One such grave reveals that the skull is missing and Bing and his father believe that the deceased's ghost haunts them and sends them a rash of bad luck. Bing hasto take matters into his own hands in order to try to resolve their situation and overcome his fears. Evaluation I was intrigued by the story because of its realistic portrayal of characters of the period. I could easily visualize the scenes and I could feel the characters' emotions as if I were there. Bing finds it hard to accept his father's shortcomings and so, Bing must learn on his own, how to survive in a culture that is somewhat foreign to him. This is an excellent book for young people to read for understanding Chinese immigrant history and to learn about their culture. -- Marilyn Egner, Librarian, Freedom High School, from Kutztown University School of Library Sciences reviews

Kids entering their teen years often face demands that require newfound inner strength, a recurrent theme in recent books for the 12-and-older crowd. Bing, a Chinese boy living in 1907 Vancouver, British Columbia, considers himself a coward until he takes on anti-Asian bigotry and manages to curry favor with a couple of ghosts in The Bone Collector's Son, by Paul Yee. -- the teacher, published: January 1, 2006, Kids Books

Bing is both frightened and humiliated by his peevish father's line of work in early twentieth-century Vancouver: exhuming the bones of his deceased countrymen to ship them back to China for reburial. It's bad enough that boarders in Chinatown therefore avoid or outright shun Ba, but his most recent exhumation, which is missing its skull, seems to be haunting him and sapping his health. Hoping to distance himself from his father's problems, Bing lands a job as a houseboy in the home of a well-to-do boxer, but the move only multiplies his problems. Now not only must he worry about his rapidly wasting father (and his father's growing debts), but the boxer's house is also haunted, and an anti-Asian citizens group harasses Bing at every turn. There are atmospheric elements aplenty in the story, and they're enhanced by the vivid realization of the turn-of-the-century setting. Unfortunately, Yee bounces Bing from plotline to plotline too rapidly to develop a proper case of the shivers, and Bing's encounter with the ghost that leads him to the missing skull is a cut-and-dried affair. This is therefore less than successful as a ghost story, but fans of Lawrence Yep may find some interest in the father-son story and the folkways of early twentieth-century Chinatown denizens. An afterword provides historical background, and a map helps readers find their way trough Bing's Vancouver. --The Bulletin, November 2005

Torontonian Paul Yee's The Bone Collector's Son is sharp with smells, even that of sewing machine lubricating oil, precise visual details ("an oilcloth-covered table with teacups soaking in a pan of water") and, especially, tales and understandings peculiar to the Chinese workers.
It's 1907 and 14-year-old Bing is humiliated and terrified that Ba (father) has roped him into a grotesque job. They exhume the bones of Chinese who died in Vancouver and send them on to have a proper burial in China. When Bing and Ba dig out a skeleton without a skull, Bing notices disturbances that can indicate only one thing: a powerfully unhappy spirit.
He's relieved when he lands a job as houseboy for the Bentley family in a swish part of town, then learns that the Bentley house is haunted. Bing has to bring into play all his courage and the wisdom of his own tradition (ancient superstitions, as he sometimes thinks) to put both spirits to rest and finally, to make peace with Ba, who never seems to earn enough to bring the family over.
Yee intertwines realism and ghost story very naturally, bringing both material circumstances and traditional spiritual beliefs alive. He gives information but also conveys, through tone and atmosphere, a worldview that's unique and fascinating. Bing's anxiety about spirits is palpable; Fortuneteller's practical advice about dealing with spirits is offered in the most earthy of surroundings - there's "men shouting and shrieking each time a domino hit the table" and the sweet smell of tobacco rising from the men's water pipes. Bing's prosaic tasks as houseboy seem just as "real" as the ghost stories his friends tell to help him understand his predicament.
Earnest, courageous Bing makes an appealing protagonist, and the story, with its quick dialogue and precise allusions to region and culture (Bing thinks of himself as "an empty salmon can - shiny on the outside, but nothing inside") is always engaging. Vancouver's Chinatown, 1907, is portrayed vividly. A good read-aloud, either at home or in the classroom. -- The Toronto Star, March 28, 2004 by Deirdre Baker

Recommended by Horn Book Editors Gr. 5-8. From the first scene, set in a graveyard, Yee's latest novel is a gripping story of a boy caught between physical and spiritual worlds. Bing is angry with his father, a compulsive gambler who has one of the worst jobs in Vancouver's Chinatown: he collects the bones of Chinese immigrants' relatives and ships them back to China. Bing loathes the frightening, ostracizing work, so he is delighted when he finds a job as a houseboy in a wealthy home. Unfortunately, his employer's house has ghosts of its own, and Bing, with help from friends in Chinatown, must summon his pride and courage to pacify the antagonistic spirits, living and dead, in his community. A few lengthy ghost stories, unrelated to the plot, seem purposefully inserted. Still, the chilly details enhance the central story's suspense, and as in Dead Man's Gold and Other Stories (2002), Yee skillfully contrasts a strong sense of the supernatural with brutal, all-too-real 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, October 1, 2005

An unusual ghost story blends East with West against the backdrop of anti-Asian protests in turn-of-the-twentieth-century Vancouver. Bing, fourteen, is a reluctant assistant to his father, whose job it is to exhume old skeletons from the Chinese cemetery for shipment back to China, where they can rest with the bones of their ancestors. Superstitious Bing has a ghost story for every occasion, and they weave themselves through the narrative in intertextual counterpoint to the main action. His distaste for bone collecting is so great that he takes a position as houseboy to a famous prizefighter, Bulldog Bentley -- despite rumors that the house is haunted. It quickly becomes clear that Bing is dealing with two ghosts -- the one that haunts the Bentley mansion, and the one that haunts his father, who has begun to sicken after digging up a headless skeleton. Yee chooses not to play the ghosts for horror, instead presenting their activities as puzzles to be solved, and it is Bing's very Chinese understanding of the spirit world that lays both ghosts to rest. If the plot often feels put together with haste rather than grace, this novel nevertheless stands as an enlightening alternative to familiar Western ghost stories. v.s. -Horn Book Review, October 2005

Bing-wing Chan has the great misfortune to have a father who is not only grumpy and unlikable but who has the gruesome job of disinterring the bones of deceased Chinese immigrants so that they can be sent back to China for a family burial. Forced to assist his father, Bing begins to encounter some strange incidents after they dig up a skeleton with no skull. Ghosts, magic and the prophesy of a fortune teller all combine to help Bing discover the courage to face the unexplainable and find a father's love. The Bone Collector's Son (Tradewind, $12.95) is another of Paul Yee's elegant and very personal tales of the early Chinese immigrants to Gold Mountain (B.C.). With a spareness that allows the humanity of the characters to come through, Yee highlights the hardships and prejudices that Chinese had to endure in their attempts to make a home in a new land. -Alison Chadsey, the Times Colonist

CM, Volume X Number 16, April 8, 2004 by Carolyn Kim

Vancouver's Chinatown in 1907 is the setting for this novel, in which the spirits of the dead come back to haunt the living. Despite the subject matter, Paul Yee's light, deft touch ensures that his book is anything but ghoulish.
Bing's father Ba has gambled away any savings he had accumulated since his arrival in Canada, and is now reduced to digging up the bones of other immigrants whose families have paid to have their loved ones' remains repatriated to China. It is grisly work, and 15-year-old Bing is deeply resentful that he is forced to help his feckless father. The final straw for Bing is the discovery that Shum, whose skeleton they have disinterred from his grave, is headless (or skull-less).
Revolted by this experience, Bing takes a job as a houseboy in a rich man's mansion. Things are badly awry there, though: The baby cries incessantly, his mother is distraught and becoming thinner by the day, and inexplicable events -- broken windows, wafts of cigar smoke where no cigar has been smoked -- are daily occurrences. And then Ba becomes mysteriously and deathly ill. Spirits of the dead, it appears, are offended, and Bing's mission is to mollify them.
As well as a being an always-engaging, fast-paced work of fiction, Yee's novel provides considerable insight into the vilification of and rampant prejudice against the Chinese in Vancouver at that time. - The Globe and Mail