Grace Lin

1 universe Last reviewed 2026-10-21

Grace Lin is an American author and illustrator of picture books, early readers and middle-grade novels, born on 17 May 1974 in New Hartford, New York, to parents who had emigrated from Taiwan. She studied children's book illustration at the Rhode Island School of Design, graduating with a BFA in 1996, and her first book, The Ugly Vegetables (1999), grew out of drawings about a Chinese American girl and her mother's garden. Her novels include The Year of the Dog, The Year of the Rat and Dumpling Days, and she turned to fantasy inspired by Chinese folklore with Where the Mountain Meets the Moon (2009), a Newbery Honor book, followed by the companions Starry River of the Sky and When the Sea Turned to Silver, a National Book Award finalist. She has also won a Theodor Geisel Honor for Ling & Ting and a Caldecott Honor for A Big Mooncake for Little Star, and lives in Northampton, Massachusetts.

Universe(s)

Books

• Where the Mountain Meets the Moon (2009) · Where the Mountain Meets the Moon Core Canon
• Starry River of the Sky (2012) · Where the Mountain Meets the Moon Core Canon
• When the Sea Turned to Silver (2016) · Where the Mountain Meets the Moon Core Canon

Aggregate across all universes

• Total Core Canon books across all universes: 3 books
• Award recognitions across all universes: 2 (1 finalist mention, 1 nomination)

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