Richie’s Picks: THE NINE MOONS OF HAN YU AND LULI
Richie Partington
Richie’s Picks: THE NINE MOONS OF HAN YU AND LULI by Karina Yan Glaser, HarperCollins/Allida, September 2025, 432p., ISBN: 978-0-06-328443-2
“Though nothing will drive them away
We can beat them, just for one day”
– David Bowie, “Heroes” (1977)
Chang’An, Ancient China
29th Day of the 8th Moon Cycle, 731
“The illness began with a persistent cough, which steadily worsened over the course of a few moon cycles. Then fevers and chills would set in, and at that point the person became too weak to get out of bed and possessed no appetite. There were no known treatments for the disease. Even Falong, Han Yu’s aunt, who was renowned throughout Chang’An for her herbal remedies, was bewildered by how to help her growing number of patients.
Customers became sparse, and business slowed. The weight of the coppers they brought home became lighter and lighter. Baba’s hair began to gray as he fretted about the sharp decrease in business. Dark smudges appeared under Mama’s eyes as she worried about the disease wrapping its hands around the lungs of their friends and neighbors.
Then everyone’s deepest worries were realized.
Li had struggled with her health since she was young. Every year she would get a spring cold, followed by a summer cold, then an autumn one. But the worst was always the winter, when the frigid winds seeped through the cracks of their home and attacked her fragile body. When the new disease started spreading throughout Chang’An, Mama suggested that Li stay home from her apprenticeship with Falong.
‘I am fine, Mama,’ Li insisted.
Li continued going to her apprenticeship through the summer, when thousands of people in Chang’An began dying from the mysterious lung disease. Then, during the hottest part of the season, Li also fell ill. For the last three moon cycles, Han Yu had woken up to the harsh, terrible sound of Li’s coughing.”
Chinatown, New York City
Thursday, October 8, 1931
“A lot had happened in the four years since receiving the news that her parents were so close to owning 59 Mott Street. Back then, there were lines of customers circling the block, waiting to get inside for Sunday afternoon dim sum or weeknight dinners. The Silk Roads Gift Shop used to be crowded with people buying bamboo chopsticks and delicately painted porcelain bowls and silk pajamas embroidered with colorful flowers.
Not anymore, Luli thought as she finished dusting the register on the counter. She looked around the lonely gift shop, empty of customers. Many shelves were bare because Quong [her uncle] could not afford to replenish their inventory. A glance outside the dusty window confirmed that there were no customers linked up and eagerly waiting for a table at Jade Palace Restaurant.
Luli knew that something was wrong–she had known for many months. She saw it in lines etched around her parents’ eyes, and she observed it in the restless way Yiyi [the chef] paced the kitchen. She saw it in the way the menu changed from a page filled with dozens of delectable options to just a few dishes as food prices continued to rise and rise. Her father, who had been so dedicated to the restaurant, had now taken to disappearing every morning and not returning until dinner.”
THE NINE MOONS OF HAN YU AND LULI features two alternating narratives, set twelve-hundred years apart. In each, eleven-year-old lead characters take it upon themselves to try, through extraordinary means, to save the day for their respective families during the crises they each face. The alternating chapters are short, and so many of them end in cliffhangers that I was repeatedly holding my breath through one chapter or another, waiting to get back to the other character and find out what would befall them next.
The first of the intertwining tales is set in ancient China, during a great respiratory sickness that is killing so many, and that we understand today as having been a tuberculosis epidemic. Han Yu eventually finds himself the only one in his immediate family who has not been quarantined due to the deadly sickness. Suddenly, faced with the possibility of helping the family financially, he ends up embarking on an impossible, mind-blowing journey.
The second narrative is set in 1931 in New York City’s Chinatown during the Great Depression. There, with the crashed economy and the family restaurant eventually forced to close, Luli seeks a way to help her parents save the building that the extended family lives and works in–and which is so close to being paid off–from being foreclosed upon.
Will the tweens succeed in their respective quests?
Over the course of the two stories, we will, in fact, discover connections between the two main characters. But there is something particularly different and magical about Han Yu. The book opens with the tale of the tiger that inexplicably appeared to him and his mother at their little family garden when Han Yu was but a few days old. Throughout the book, many characters become fascinated with the “tiger boy” who domestic animals and a trio of birds follow without urging or training.
A breathtaking, first-rate adventure story for young readers wrapped inside a standout, well-researched piece of historical fiction, THE NINE MOONS OF HAN YU AND LULI is one of the best and most exciting reads of 2025.
Richie Partington, MLIS
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