Her sidekick, John, is a transracial adoptee (black adopted into a white family) and wants to be an astronaut when he grows up. Jewel, the protagonist, is mixed race – Jamaican, Mexican, and white – and she wants to be a geologist when she grows up. I needed to do tons of research for Bird. How did you approach the research process for your story? What resources did you turn to? What roadblocks did you run into? How did you overcome them? What was your greatest coup, and how did it inform your manuscript? Suddenly, Jewel needs to choose whether to stay loyal to the person her family wants her to be or to claim her own identity, no matter the cost. As the thick layers of silence in her family begin to unravel, Jewel finds that her life is not as stable nor her family’s expectations as certain as she once thought.

John’s presence, however, has an unsettling effect on her family. But when a boy named John moves into her town, his courage and charisma immediately stand out and the two kids instantly click. At least, that’s sure what it seems like for twelve-year old Jewel.Īdd to that the fact that you’re the only mixed-race family in your rural Iowan town, and well, life can get kind of lonely sometimes. It’s only natural to have silence and secrets in your family when you’re born on the same day that your brother died.

Crystal Chan is the first-time author of Bird (Atheneum, 2014).

Bird by crystal chan