Seventh-grader Tom Lee leads an ordinary life with his grandmother in San Francisco until she is killed by a monster and he finds himself apprenticed to Mr. Hu, a shape-changing tiger who is Guardian of a precious phoenix egg. Villainous creatures want to steal the egg to wreak havoc on the world, so when it disappears, Tom, Mr. Hu, an ostracized dragon, and a roguish monkey battle evil monsters to retrieve it. Designated as the first book in a planned series, this reads like the second or third book, with a great deal of background information packed into the first several chapters. Once the explanations are out of the way, the pace quickens and adventures ensue. The Harry Potter-like events are enticing, and the elements of Chinese mythology and culture give the story a distinctively Asian perspective.

Always eager to spring into action, Duck hastens to repair what he thinks is a leak in his roof, but his misguided efforts cause one catastrophe after another. A helpful frog plays a somewhat artificial role in the story. However, the rhyming text is well suited to Duck's wacky exploits and so are the energetic illustrations, which, appropriately enough, frequently escape their boxed margins.

<p>This colorful fantasy seamlessly weaves ancient Chinese mythology into the contemporary city of San Francisco. Twelve-year-old Tom Lee, who lives with his grandmother, arrives home one day to find an old man with furry ears opening his door for him. The man turns out to be a tiger, Tom's grandmother turns out to be a powerful magician guarding a world-changing object, and Tom himself turns out to bear a sudden burden of responsibility. Thrust quickly into a skirmish, Tom barely has time to ask what's going on before he and the tiger are escaping onto the roof with the magical object while his grandmother remains inside to fight monsters. Her death is shocking but helps Tom begin to understand how important the object must be. A phoenix egg disguised as a cheap coral rose; the object holds the powera"in the wrong handsa"to flood the world with chaos and destruction. Mr. Hu, the tiger, has now become its Guardian, and Tom his apprentice. A dragon, a golden monkey, and a flying yellow rat join their forces, employing both enchantments and wit as their task takes them underwater, underground, and finally into another realm. Chapter-beginning quotations about the relevant Chinese mythology and its creatures give the story a deep, archetypal element. Near the end, Mr. Hu shares his soul to save Tom's life; what Tom will be like as part tiger, and what the monsters will try next to procure the object, must wait for the second entry in this simultaneously gentle and suspenseful series. (afterword) (Fiction. 9-12)</p>

"A very few must protect the many, and with no thanks for their efforts." An ominous portent for an eighth grade boy, but that's the lesson at the heart of this original fairy tale, in which Yep (<EMPHASIS TYPE=""ITALIC"">Dragon of the Lost Sea) once again successfully mixes fantasy and Chinese history. Tom Lee lives with his elderly grandmother, Mistress Lee, in a house filled with arcane signs and mirrors with trigrams. She has been teaching her grandson the philosophy of the Lore, but Tom soon discovers just how much power his Grandmom holds as a Guardian. The day he comes home to find Mr. Hu, a shapeshifting tiger who once studied under Mistress Lee, dark forces attack, seeking a magical artifact. Tom's Grandmom is killed, and he and the tiger must seek out the evil Vatten; the villain has stolen a fabled phoenix egg and is trying to force it to hatch. Mr. Hu gathers two other admirers of Mistress Lee: the dragon Mistral and mischievous Monkey. An intriguing side story tells how Monkey led a rebellion against Heaven itself, and stole magical peaches that give eternal life. Small touches like these, combined with nuggets of wisdom ("Magic that forces someone to change taints itself. It poisons the heart of the user," Hu explains to Tom) and often elegant prose (Mistral's "scarred scales were black as chips of night") endow this tale, the first in a trilogy, with a sense of wonder. Ages 10-up. <EMPHASIS TYPE=""ITALIC"">(Apr.)

Gr 5-7-San Francisco is the setting for this modern-day fantasy. Tom is his Chinese grandmother's somewhat reluctant apprentice in magical arts, but after she dies while defending a mysterious coral rose from evil foes, the eighth grader finds himself enmeshed in a dangerous world where Chinese myth is a reality. The rose, a phoenix egg in disguise, is stolen by Kung Kung's lieutenant, who wants to use it to take over the world, and a motley crew of bickering magical creatures goes on a mission to get it back. The action is nonstop, with one predicament and villain after another, and plenty of humor to lighten things up. Tom's friends may be exotic, but they still have to take buses and taxis to get across the city, squabbling like siblings all the way. Some scenes feel a bit too familiar (a magical marketplace in Chinatown called Goblin Square is quite reminiscent of Harry Potter's Diagon Alley), but the emphasis on Chinese folklore and culture keeps the story fresh. The sense of menace from a powerful enemy isn't as strong or as pervasive as it could be, which sometimes gives the impression that Tom and his cohorts are on an afternoon jaunt rather than an urgent and dangerous quest, but the plot is still compelling, with enough strings left hanging to make readers eagerly anticipate the next book in this projected series.-Eva Mitnick, Los Angeles Public Library Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.