Lion Dancers
Wei has always wanted to be a lion dancer. His father was part of a championship-winning lion dance team, and Wei 
dreamed of doing athletic stunts like him. He joined a team, where he and his friend Hung danced together in the two-person lion costume: Wei as the head, and Hung as the tail. But when Wei’s father died and Hung started making fun of lion dancing, Wei quit.
Two years later, in middle school, Wei is unhappy as a benchwarmer on the basketball team. When he learns about a local junior lion dance team, he decides to join. Lion dancing again feels great, and Wei is making new friends. The only problem? Hung is on the team, and he wants Wei out.
This fun story offers a fascinating look at some techniques and traditions of lion dancing. The team consists of not just the dancers inside the lion costumes but also drummers and cymbalists who accompany the dance. All members of Wei’s junior team are trained on drums and cymbals as well as dancing, and they sometimes switch out during long performances, since the dancing can be exhausting. The team does a variety of performance types, from dancing onstage to roaming through crowds on the street at Lunar New Year to being hired to bless shops and restaurants.
Like many sports stories, this book includes a competition aspect: the senior team captains are observing the junior team to decide which members will participate in an upcoming competition. Wei and Hung both desperately want to be chosen. Both currently dance as lion “heads,” and both are skilled, though Hung is better because Wei has not been dancing for the last two years. However, Wei is improving quickly, and Hung faces a frustrating problem: he wants to keep performing as a head, but he has the stronger, heavier build of a tail. When a lion jumps or rears up during a performance, the person dancing as a tail must lift their partner, and it is becoming hard for Hung’s tail to lift him. Wei is smaller, ideally built for a head. When he joins the team, Hung is furious, fearing that he will once again be made a tail to Wei’s head. This leads to much of the book’s conflict and drama. While the story mostly follows Wei, we get a few scenes from Hung’s point of view as well.
The art is clear, dynamic, and expressive. The characters have a cartoon style, but still fit with the highly detailed lion costumes and backgrounds. The movements are natural and easy to follow, even when the characters are in their lion costumes. The costumes themselves are beautifully illustrated and become highly expressive with the dancers’ movements. The characters’ facial features are sometimes similar, but distinctive hairstyles make it easy to tell them apart. At the beginning of each of the book’s eight chapters, a lion dance move or tradition is illustrated and explained. This adds interesting context to the story. Readers may be inspired to look up some lion dance performance videos!
The conflicts in this story are Wei versus Hung and Wei versus his own self-doubt. There is some middle-school meanness, but no physical violence. Wei has a lot of self-doubt, and he misses his dad, but he has a loving grandmother and one good friend even before he joins the team, so there is support in his life.
This is a lively story featuring a highly athletic sport/performance art that may be unfamiliar to many readers. It will appeal to fans of middle school stories featuring unusual sports, like Roller Girl by Victoria Jamieson, and to anyone interested in learning about a cool dance tradition.
Lion Dancers
By Cai Tse
Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers, 2024
ISBN: 9781665927239
Publisher Age Rating: 8-12
NFNT Age Recommendation: Middle Grade (7-11), Tween (10-13)
Creator Representation: Australian, Chinese,
