journey synopsis book

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BOOKS JOURNEY

A 2014 Caldecott Honor Book

A lonely girl draws a magic door on her bedroom wall and through it escapes into a world where wonder, adventure, and danger abound. Red marker in hand, she creates a boat, a balloon, and a flying carpet that carry her on a spectacular journey toward an uncertain destiny. When she is captured by a sinister emperor, only an act of tremendous courage and kindness can set her free. Can it also lead her home and to her heart’s desire? With supple line, luminous color, and nimble flights of fancy, author-illustrator Aaron Becker launches an ordinary child on an extraordinary journey toward her greatest and most exciting adventure of all.

“Though Becker has plenty of experience as an artist for films, “Journey” is his first book, and it’s a masterwork.” — New York Times Book Review

Click here to order JOURNEY from bookshop.org and help support independent booksellers across the country!

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Journey, by Aaron Becker | Book Review

Book Review of  Journey The Children’s Book Review

Written and Illustrated by Aaron Becker

Ages 4+ | 40 Pages

Publisher: Candlewick | ISBN-13: 9780763660536

What to Expect: A Wordless Adventure

Sometimes there are no words to describe a book. And sometimes, there are no words in the actual book itself. Journey is one of those books—it’s both wordless and wondrous.

When a young girl draws a magic door on her bedroom wall and goes through it with her red marker, she leaves a drab-colored world and enters a magical world filled with color and adventure. Using a colored marker, she creates ways to navigate this unknown place: a boat, a balloon, a flying carpet, and a tandem bike. Amongst the world’s beauty, there is also danger, and an evil emperor captures the girl. How will she escape? How will she return home?

No spoiler here, but an unexpected friendship is the outcome of this incredibly gorgeous tale told only by the artwork on the pages. The little girl is adventurous, courageous, and kind and knows how to have fun. She will inspire you to take your own imaginative journey if you can tear yourself away from this incredible book.

The first book in a trilogy, Journey by Aaron Becker, won a most prestigious award—a Caldecott Honor Book in 2014.

Buy the Book

About the author-illustrator.

Aaron Becker has worked as an artist in the film and animation industry, where he helped define the look and feel of characters, stories, and the movies they become a part of. With Journey, he has created characters and worlds of his very own, using traditional materials and techniques. Aaron Becker lives with his wife, daughter, and cat in Amherst, Massachusetts.

What to Read Next if You Love Journey by Aaron Becker

Quest , by Aaron Becker

Return , by Aaron Becker

The Tree and the River , by Aaron Becker

Harold and the Purple Crayon , by Crockett Johnson

Where the Wild Things Are , by Maurice Sendak

The Red Book , by Barbara Lehman

Bianca Schulze reviewed  Journey by Aaron Becker. Discover more books like  Journey  by reading our reviews and articles tagged with Adventure .

What to Read Next:

• Return, by Aaron Becker | Book Review
• Caldecott Award: Randolph Caldecott Medal Winner | 2014
• Aaron Becker Discusses ‘The Tree and the River’
• Mango, Abuela, and Me | Book Review

• X (Twitter)

Bianca Schulze is the founder of The Children’s Book Review. She is a reader, reviewer, mother and children’s book lover. She also has a decade’s worth of experience working with children in the great outdoors. Combined with her love of books and experience as a children’s specialist bookseller, the goal is to share her passion for children’s literature to grow readers. Born and raised in Sydney, Australia, she now lives with her husband and three children near Boulder, Colorado.

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Common Sense Media Review

Enchanting art, wordless fantasy lead kids to tell story.

Parents Need to Know

Parents need to know that Journey is a picture book -- and what pictures they are. Aaron Becker's absolutely amazing illustrations need no words to feed the imagination of readers of any age as they're caught up in the adventure of the little girl and her magical red crayon. Although the premise recalls the…

Why Age 5+?

The soldiers on the floating ship have weapons, capture the magical purple bird,

Any Positive Content?

Using your imagination, you can find creative ways to fight loneliness. By helpi

The plucky little girl is brave, adventurous, virtuous, and resourceful. She exp

Having no words, Journey encourages the reader to be the storyteller. Kids can u

Violence & Scariness

The soldiers on the floating ship have weapons, capture the magical purple bird, chase the little girl when she falls through the air, and put her in a cage. She takes another plunge through the air when her boat goes over a waterfall but saves herself. Nothing's gory or bloody, but the situations may scare some kids.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Violence & Scariness in your kid's entertainment guide.

Positive Messages

Using your imagination, you can find creative ways to fight loneliness. By helping others, you may find the best kind of friends. When friends help friends, the world's a better place.

Positive Role Models

The plucky little girl is brave, adventurous, virtuous, and resourceful. She explores the enchanted world that opens before her, risks her life to free a trapped bird, and figures out how to use her imagination and the red crayon to make her world one of beauty and friendship.

Educational Value

Having no words, Journey encourages the reader to be the storyteller. Kids can use their own imaginations to tell what's going on in the magical drawings.

Parents need to know that Journey is a picture book -- and what pictures they are. Aaron Becker's absolutely amazing illustrations need no words to feed the imagination of readers of any age as they're caught up in the adventure of the little girl and her magical red crayon. Although the premise recalls the classic Harold and the Purple Crayon , Journey is very different: It's more complex and presents a clear lesson. Happily, a clever twist at the end pays special homage to Harold.

Where to Read

Parent and kid reviews.

• Parents say (1)

Based on 1 parent review

Beautiful and fun

What's the story.

A young girl escapes her lonely, sepia-tone world by drawing a door that leads into an enchanted world tinted with color, adventure, and, ultimately, friendship. She takes quite a JOURNEY in this completely wordless picture book, with her magical red crayon as the key. In a little red rowboat, she sails along the canals of a golden-domed city. In a bright-red hot-air balloon, she escapes one near-misadventure and heads toward another. Finally, she lands in a cage after an encounter with a sinister crew and an exotic purple bird, and, as the crayon falls from her hands, all seems lost. Bravery, and a little help from the loyal bird, lead her to further adventures a bit closer to home, where she finds she's not the only one with a magic crayon and an imagination.

Is It Any Good?

A kid brings meaning and adventure to the world using imagination and a crayon; it’s a familiar premise, but Becker's magical, complex artwork and charming story take it into new territory. He creates enchanted, imaginative backdrops galore, but it's the little girl's simple lines, the bright red of the things she draws, the bird's purple feathers, and the fascinating twist at the end that make the story.

Talk to Your Kids About ...

Families can talk about what stories the pictures tell. With no words, Journey can become whatever adventure readers create together. Kids can tell it to parents, parents can tell it to kids, and it can change with each telling.

How does Becker use color to help tell the story? What do the sepia tones convey? How about the red crayon or the bright red of the things the little girl draws? What would have been different if she'd had a green crayon? Or a blue one?

How do you feel about books that have no words? How can an artist tell a complicated story using only illustrations? Do you like the freedom it gives you to make up your own words when you look at the book?

Book Details

• Author : Aaron Becker
• Illustrator : Aaron Becker
• Genre : Picture Book
• Topics : Magic and Fantasy , Adventures , Friendship
• Book type : Fiction
• Publisher : Candlewick Press
• Publication date : August 6, 2013
• Publisher's recommended age(s) : 4 - 8
• Number of pages : 40
• Available on : Hardback
• Award : ALA Best and Notable Books
• Last updated : March 4, 2020

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Crushing Krisis

Comic Books, Drag Race, & Life in New Zealand

Children’s Book Review: The Journey Trilogy by Aaron Becker

November 5, 2016 by krisis

[Patreon-Nov16-Post-Bug][/Patreon-Nov16-Post-Bug]The first time I encountered a wordless picture book for children was  Journey at my mother’s house nearly a year ago. Long before we had ventured to the library she was already cycling through books for EV every time she visited.

Over the summer, E bought EV a wordless book called  Pool . I was skeptical of it at first, recalling EV’s disinterest in  Journey . Then, I watched something magic begin to happen. E kept making up the story of  Pool , and EV began to  interact with the story . Sometimes she interjected to add something from a prior telling, others she inserted her own details.

I took a turn reading it to her, and I noticed different facets of it than E, so my telling was a shade different. If I asked nicely enough and didn’t make a big deal about it, EV would even “read”  Pool to me.

Pool was one of our most-read books during the summer. When E was listing off books from her want-list for our request list for the library and mentioned  Journey , my ears pricked up.

I wondered – how would EV like the book now that she was older and more engaged in the shared creation of a story? Would  Journey include both enough narrative and enough ambiguity to make for as interesting a read as Pool?

What a difference a few months made!

The Journey Trilogy: Journey, Quest , and Return by Aaron Becker 

Gender Diversity: Female protagonist; most other characters are male, although background characters are sometimes agender.

Ethnic Diversity: None, unfortunately

Challenging Language: None!

Themes to Discuss: imagination, fantasy, canals, cooperation

Reading Time: Depends on the reader! Between 4-15 minutes each, for us.

The Journey Trilogy by Aaron Becker is a beautiful, brilliant, fantastical trio of wordless adventure books by with a capable little girl hero, each with plenty of room for interpretation and expansion in the retelling. Becker proves himself an ingenious storyteller with an eye for detail and a knack for tantalizing ambiguity.

Journey   is the story of a young girl who uses a piece of red chalk to travel to a fantastic world by drawing a door on her bedroom walk. In that world, she learns that the chalk can draw anything out of thin air.

After sailing through a town built on a series of canals, she encounters a group of soldiers flying in zeppelins are trying to catch a vivid purple bird. The girl tries to save the bird, but she’s captured herself, and the two work together so she can get free. The bird leads her to a door just like her own, except it’s the same color as the bird! On the other side, she is back in the real world down the street from her house, where she meets a boy with purple chalk.

The easiest example is the red chalk itself. The girl finds it on the floor of her room. Is it the first time she has encountered it? The natural urge is to say yes, as that fits with how stories like this one are usually told. However, she already owns a matching red scooter and red ball which she has been carrying around the house with her. Is it a coincidence that red is her favorite color, or had she created with the chalk before?

These points of interpretation abound in  Journey , and they’re part of what makes it so fun in the retelling. Does the girl mean to steer her little red boat to the top of the highest canal? Is it she or the the bird who engineers the magic carpet that will fit through the bars of her cage? Where do she and the boy find the body of a bike that they draw wheels for at the end of the book?

That’s what makes  Journey perfect for a small reader who can interact with you while you read. The details that EV noticed and questions she asked shaped out version of the story. Sometimes it’s a very plain, descriptive version that simply explains the action on each page. Others it unfurls in the telling like a florid fairy tale, full of little asides and descriptions of the girl’s inner monologue.

Journey would already be a surefire recommendation if it stood alone, but Aaron Becker extended the story into two additional books –  Quest and  Return – that are somehow even more captivating than  Journey itself!

Return begins similarly to  Journey  – the girl decides to travel to her secret world when her father doesn’t play with her. This time, her father follows her to her room and discovers the open door and the fantastical world on the other side. He finds the girl, boy, and king meeting together, but they’re interrupted with the guards and a machine that can vacuum up their colorful creations – and their chalk! A chase ensues, in which the girl’s father sees all the ingenious ways she’s learned how to use the chalk. However, they have to work together to figure out how to protect the girl’s red chalk from capture and free the king and the boy from the grips of the guards.

There is so much to love in both books, but I’ll simply highlight my favorite element of each.

My main telling has the boy as much more tentative and unsure than the girl to emphasize how strong encouragement makes her a good leader and friend. However, there are other times I put them on more equal footing, or have them bicker amusingly. Sometimes the girl is cautious, while others she is headstrong and needs to be reeled back in by the boy.

Each person I’ve watched read it with EV gives the pair their own balance. The only thing you cannot really exclude is that the girl is clearly the protagonist of the series.

Return is  The Empire Strikes Back of the trilogy, because the introduction of the father to the story includes several potentially mind-blowing revelations that fundamentally change the story depending on how much you fixate on the details of the book.

• The father appears to be drawing at his work desk – what is his job or hobby?
• A door similar to the girl’s can be spotted in the father’s office early in the book. Does it already (or did it ever) lead to the fantasy world?
• The father and the girl both have looks of shock on their faces when they meet in the fantasy world. What is it that surprises each of them? What is it that causes the girl’s subsequent cross-armed reticence?
• The girl and her father encounter a series of seemingly prophetic sketches in a cave. How did they get there?
• Did the father always have the ability to draw in the world with his gray work pencil, or did something happen to cause it to be useful? And, do you think the gray looks similar to the gray of the guard’s armor?

If you read between the lines in those questions, you can see that there is an intriguing meta-narrative about the father that might change the meaning of the prior books depending on your interpretation. This is just one example of how the books open themselves up to growing in the retelling.

When I evaluate if a purchase was worthwhile, I do so on a matrix of dollars invested vs. time enjoyed vs. intensity of enjoyment. If I apply that matrix to the  Journey  books they are a relatively flat shape of nearly infinity length and width – meaning, they weren’t that expensive but there is  no end to the time and amount of enjoyment EV gets from them. She walks around the house with them clutched tightly to her little chest, and will sit for an hour retelling the stories to her stuffed animals and toys.

My sole critique of Journey is that Becker missed an easy opportunity to diversify his cast in making the little boy anything other than white. We don’t meet any of his relatives (OR DO WE?), so his whiteness doesn’t create consistency with any other element of the book. Having him be a kid of color who makes fast friends with the girl and joins in her adventure would only add to the wordless power of these books in displaying friendship, loyalty, and cooperation.

The  Journey  Trilogy is breathtaking modern classic of fantasy from Aaron Becker that can captivate kids from age 2 to 102. All it takes to enjoy them is an imagination and a willingness to get lost in the beautiful details of his fantasy world. If your toddler isn’t quite enough for it yet, she’ll get there.

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Writing Root Back to List

Resource written by

Pippa mcgeoch.

Senior Consultant

Resource Preview

A writing root for journey.

KS: Lower KS2, R & KS1, Upper KS2

Year Group: Reception, Year 1, Year 2, Year 3, Year 4, Year 5, Year 6

Literary Theme: Coming together & community

Author(s): Aaron Becker

"The most fantastic way to launch the year: our whole primary school is excited to write."

Anna Chidzey, whole school, British International School Riyadh

• Description

Main Outcome(s):

Predictions, retellings in role, maps, posters, a travel diary, instructions and a story sequel.

10+ sessions, 2+ weeks

Overview and Outcomes:

This is a two-week Whole School Writing Root for Journey by Aaron Becker. The resource has been designed to be used by an entire school to foster a shared learning experience around one text and to engender written outcomes – some with the same audiences and purposes, some not – that are ‘at pitch’ for each phase/stage but that will also aid revision, catch-up and extension where (and in whichever form) needed. We have planned for activities at 3 stages: Reception with Year 1; Year 2 with Year 3 and then Year 4 to Year 6. The resource is intended to form the basis upon which schools and teachers can create and shape a sequence of learning that will work within their context.  The sessions could be added to with art activities and through further learning in PSHE, Science, Geography and History.

Synopsis of Text:

The winner of the prestigious Caldecott Honor, and described by the New York Times as 'a masterwork', Aaron Becker's stunning, wordless picture book debut about self-determination and unexpected friendship follows a little girl who draws a magic door on her bedroom wall. Through it she escapes into a world where wonder, adventure and danger abound. Red marker pen in hand, she creates a boat, a balloon and a flying carpet which carry her on a spectacular journey ... who knows where? When she is captured by a sinister emperor, only an act of tremendous courage and kindness can set her free. Can it also guide her home and to happiness? In this exquisitely illustrated book, an ordinary child is launched on an extraordinary, magical journey towards her greatest and most rewarding adventure of all...

Wordless, fantasy worlds, loneliness, companionship

A Spelling Seed for Escape from Pompeii

KS: Lower KS2

Year Group: Year 3

A Writing Root for The Pied Piper of Hamelin

A Writing Root for The Sleeper and the Spindle

KS: Upper KS2

Year Group: Year 5

The Journey Trilogy Books

The Journey Trilogy Series

The Creative Behind the Books

Aaron Becker learned while living in Granada, Spain, that many of the city’s stone churches had at one point been mosques and, before that, Roman ruins. Which got him thinking: What wisdom can something as still as a rock share with the rest of us? While he could only guess at the answer, he does have some experience with these ancient fragments of earth. After all, the house where he grew up in Baltimore was built from, you guessed it, stone. Aaron Becker lives in western Massachusetts.

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Clint Smith Confronts the History of America’s Past: A Book Review

In How the Word is Passed , Clint Smith embarks on a journey through America’s landscapes and landmarks, untangling the deep-seated history of slavery that continues to shape our nation. Angola Prison in Louisiana is one of the most compelling of the eight stops on this journey, which exemplifies the lasting legacy of America’s darkest chapter.

Angola Prison, the largest maximum-security prison in the United States, is a vast complex that covers an area the size of Manhattan. What is particularly haunting about this prison is its location—it stands on what was once a plantation. Today, Angola houses thousands of inmates, 70% of whom are Black, with an average sentence of 87 years. This glaring racial disparity, coupled with the fact that non-unanimous juries convicted many prisoners—a practice now deemed unconstitutional—highlights the persistent systemic racism entrenched within the American justice system.

Smith draws a strong parallel between Angola and the atrocities of the Holocaust, stating, “If in Germany today there were a prison built on top of a former concentration camp, and that prison disproportionately incarcerated Jewish people, it would rightly provoke outrage through the world.” This comparison forces readers to face the moral dissonance in America’s acceptance of such an institution. The fact that Angola exists—and even celebrates its existence with gift shop items like coffee mugs labeling it a “gated community”—is a testament to the normalization of racial injustice in the U.S.

Smith’s journey through America’s past is not merely a retelling of history but a study of the blurred lines between history, memory, and nostalgia. On his first stop at Monticello, the tour guide, David, says, “I’ve come to realize that there’s a difference between history and nostalgia, and somewhere between those two is memory. I think that history is the story of the past, using all the available facts and that nostalgia is a fantasy about the past using no facts, and somewhere in between is memory.” This reflection speaks to the selective memory that shapes America’s understanding of its past, where uncomfortable truths are often glossed over in favor of a more sanitized history.

Smith vividly depicts the various characters he meets along his journey that bring these histories to life. One woman he describes “moved with a dexterity that belied her eight decades, her curly white hair coiled around her head and her eyes as calm as dusk.” Another woman, with “shoulder-length hair composed of tight black curls with a faint trace of red highlights dressing their corkscrew tips,” uses humor to navigate and share the nation’s darkest moments. These figures represent the strength and wisdom of those who continue to witness history, refusing to let it fade into nostalgia.

As Smith travels across cities filled with the echoes of the past, the soundscape is as alive as the stories he uncovers. “Sound emanated from every direction: the staccato jackhammers cracking blocks of concrete in their search for softer earth; cranes stretching their steel joints to lift rubble from one corner of the street to another; ambulances mazing their way through cars and crosswalks, their red flares howling a loud and urgent incantation.” These noises serve as a reminder that history is not stationary but ever-present, echoing through the streets and lives of those who occupy them.

An especially poignant moment in the book captures why telling these stories is crucial. Smith quotes an elder reflecting on the Civil Rights Movement: “I think my generation,” she said, “many getting killed, and beaten, and spit on, and dogs, and hoses, did not understand that you have to keep telling the story in order for people to understand. Each generation has to know the story of how we got where we are today because if you don’t understand, then you are in the position to go back to it.” This belief stresses the importance of preserving and sharing these histories to prevent the repetition of past atrocities.

Throughout How the Word is Passed, Smith highlights the importance of confronting the truth, even when it is uncomfortable. “Some people don’t know, and some people don’t want to know,” he said in a recent interview. “This is a book for those who don’t know the history of slavery in America and its continued profound impact on all aspects of our society, and it’s likely that those who think they know actually don’t.” Smith’s work is a call to those willing to listen, learn, and engage with this country’s genuine history.

In a nation where the scars of slavery run deep, Angola Prison stands as a stark reminder of how far we still have to go. Clint Smith’s How the Word is Passed challenges readers to face these scars, move beyond nostalgia, and grapple with the weight of memory. Through this confrontation, there is hope for a future where justice is an ideal and a lived reality for all.

An OLLI member since 2017,  Simone Adair  is also a Rosie the Riveter docent, a voracious reader with books in every room and on every device, a longtime Board Member of a running club, a photographer, an editor, and even a LEGO builder in her nearly non-existent free time.

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The country’s largest publishers sue Florida over school book bans

Works by hundreds of authors, from Maya Angelou to Judy Blume, have been challenged and removed from school libraries. Now a group is suing to bring them back.

A group of major publishers, authors and parents have sued Florida education officials over a law that allows parents and local residents to limit what books are available in school libraries if they depict or describe “sexual conduct.”

The lawsuit filed by Penguin Random House, Simon & Schuster, Harper Collins and others alleges that the state law, enacted last year, brought about hundreds of book removals and is violating First Amendment rights to free speech.

According to the lawsuit , some of the books that Florida has required be removed from school libraries under House Bill 1069 include: Maya Angelou’s “I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings,” Ernest Hemingway’s “For Whom the Bell Tolls,” Alice Walker’s “The Color Purple,” Leo Tolstoy’s “Anna Karenina” and Kurt Vonnegut’s “Slaughter-House Five.”

The lawsuit challenges a section of the bill that requires school districts to remove a book that “depicts or describes sexual content” or is “pornographic.” One process to remove books from school libraries under the law allows parents to read out loud the controversial passages during a school board meeting, and if the board halts the reading due to explicit content, the school must “discontinue use of the material.”

Florida officials have described this week’s lawsuit as a “stunt.”

“There are no books banned in Florida,” said Nathalia Medina, a spokeswoman for the state’s Department of Education. “Sexually explicit material and instruction are not suitable for schools.”

Book bans have long been part of the country’s culture wars as school officials, parents and lawmakers tussle over how race, history and sexuality can be taught in school. Florida is at the forefront of the clash , as it leads the national surge in school book challenges, according to a report released in April by Pen America, a nonprofit advocating free speech.

Thursday’s lawsuit, filed in federal court in Orlando, argues that publishers and authors have the right to have their books read while students have the right, under the First Amendment, to “read constitutionally protected books, free from unconstitutional content-based restrictions mandated by the State of Florida.”

The suit alleges that House Bill 1069 does not consider the book as a whole before removing it for having “sexual content” and that it does not specify what level of detail mandates that a book be removed for describing sexual content. Another concern, the suit alleges, is that the law’s use of the term “pornographic” is vague and often books that are described as such “are not remotely obscene,” including Toni Morrison’s “The Bluest Eye.”

The suit said the law allows for the removal of books before consulting “trained professionals, such as teachers or media specialists.” It adds that some teachers have shut down their classroom libraries out of fear of objections, controversies or the risk of losing their teaching licenses.

Previously, the office of Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) said the state’s Department of Education “does not ban books” and has described book ban allegations as a “hoax” or “false narrative.” His office has said the law “protects children from indoctrination” and gives parents and residents the ability to see the materials their children have access to at school as well as “the ability to object to inappropriate materials.”

However, Florida has faced criticism and lawsuits regarding r emoved books since last year. Between July 2021 and December 2023, Florida had 3,135 book bans recorded, according to PEN America.

The full group of plaintiffs challenging portions of Florida’s law includes publishing companies Penguin Random House, Hachette Book Group, HarperCollins Publishers, Macmillan Publishing Group, Simon & Schuster and Sourcebooks; the Authors Guild, an organization that advocates on issues of free expression; authors such as Julia Alvarez, John Green, Laurie Halse Anderson, Jodi Picoult and Angie Thomas; and two parents, Heidi Kellogg and Judith Anne Hayes.

The complaint was filed against officials in the Florida State Board of Education, Orange County School Board and Volusia County School Board. DeSantis, who has led the charge for the law limiting books in school, is not named in the suit.

The suit is not attempting to overturn the entire law, the complaint stated, nor do publishing companies want Florida school districts to ensure school libraries do not carry obscene books. The goal is to reject parts of the law that prohibit content that “describes sexual conduct” and the vague description of the word “pornographic.”

Hayes, the mother of a student in Orange County, stated in the suit that she wants her child to be able to read books such as “Love in the Time of Cholera,” — a book by Gabriel García Márquez that she said was removed from her child’s classroom — without experiencing any roadblocks or “stigma associated with reading books that have been falsely branded as ‘pornographic’ or otherwise inappropriate.”

• HISTORY & CULTURE

The real history behind the legend of Sun Wukong, China's Monkey King

Video game “Black Myth: Wukong” is introducing an entirely new audience to the star character from 16th century classic “Journey to the West.”

Sun Wukong, a monkey with human characteristics and abilities, is one of the best loved and most enduring characters in Chinese literature. Armed with a staff and extraordinary abilities, Sun Wukong, aka The Monkey King, comes from the 16th-century classic Journey to the West .

In the centuries since his literary debut, Sun Wukong has been the subject of movies, TV shows, and games across both the East and the West. Most recently, his story inspired the video game Black Myth: Wukong , introducing new audiences to the beloved character.      

The seed of Sun Wukong’s story lies in a real-life pilgrimage  

The story of Sun Wukong begins with history, not myth. In 629, Xuanzang, a Buddhist monk in China, began a 16-year, 10,000-mile journey to track down holy texts in India. Xuanzang’s account of his journey, Records of the Western Regions , became so ingrained in the Chinese imagination that they served as the basis for the novel Journey to the West , which first appeared in print in the 1590s.

The novel, attributed to writer Wu Cheng'en, fictionalizes Xuanzang’s journey, transforming the historical figure into the fictional monk Tang Sanzang. He is joined by three mythical helpers who protect him on his pilgrimage, including a monkey called Sun Wukong.

Birth of the Monkey King

Scholars can’t say for certain where the character of Sun Wukong came from, but Journey to the West likely borrowed from existing myths and legends. Some possible sources of inspiration for the character include Wuzhiqi, an ape-like figure in Chinese mythology, and Hanuman , a Hindu god with a monkey’s face.

Despite unresolved questions about the character’s roots, there is no ambiguity surrounding Sun Wukong’s origin story in Journey to the West : A stone gives birth to an egg , which transforms into Sun Wukong. He likely appears as a macaque , a kind of monkey that lives throughout Asia.

He soon earns the title “Monkey King” through a daring act of courage. While living with fellow monkeys on Flower Fruit Mountain, they stumble on a waterfall. Sun Wukong volunteers to jump across the stream of water to see what is on the other side. He discovers a cave, and the monkeys reward his bravery by naming him their king.

  Sun Wukong has superhuman abilities and plays by his own rules

Sun Wukong possesses extraordinary powers . Among them: 72 Transformations, which enable him to shape-shift. Space is no obstacle for him, and one story recounts how he travels thousands of miles with a single somersault.

Journey to the West also extols Sun Wukong’s martial skills, aided by his strength, staff, and ability to fly.

Sun Wukong embodies many of the characteristics people associate with monkeys, including mischievousness. As a trickster figure, he shares attributes with other fixtures of myth and legend, such as Loki , Reynard , and Brer Rabbit .

The Monkey King bristles against authority, and he is troubled by the fact that there is one thing he’ll never be able to conquer: death. So he sets out to gain immortality, spending years wandering the world in search of it.  

His journey to find immortality takes him all the way to heaven, the realm of the Jade Emperor. The Monkey King gets into all manner of mischief there, including sneaking into forbidden parts of the palace. In another incident, he gorges on special peaches and spoils a royal banquet.

Sun Wukong even proclaims himself the Jade Emperor’s equal. The Jade Emperor seeks help from the Buddha to punish him, and so he imprisons the Monkey King in a mountain. He remains incarcerated there for 500 years, until an unexpected opportunity for redemption arises.

Sun Wukong’s great journey  

When Tang Sanzang begins his travels in Journey to the West , he comes across Sun Wukong, still imprisoned in the mountain. The monkey agrees to protect him on his pilgrimage so that he can win his freedom.  

On the road, Sun Wukong proves to be a formidable bodyguard for the monk as demons and spirits pursue the travelers . Some of them hope to prevent Tang Sanzang from collecting the holy texts; others believe they can become immortal by consuming the monk’s body . None of these villains are successful, thanks to Sun Wukong’s powers. In thanks for this, Sun Wukong is elevated to become an honorary Buddha.

Though Journey to the West was technically about Tang Sanzang’s pilgrimage, readers embraced Sun Wukong, and he became the most popular character in the novel.

Sun Wukong spent parts of Journey to the West searching for immortality, and he eventually found it in the real world: in literature and pop culture. In this rich afterlife, Sun Wukong has inspired films, plays, television series, video games, and comic books, ensuring that this enduring character will continue to embark on new adventures with future generations.

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Journey: A Novel Paperback – June 9, 2015

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• Print length 208 pages
• Language English
• Publisher Dial Press Trade Paperback
• Publication date June 9, 2015
• Dimensions 5.47 x 0.6 x 8.19 inches
• ISBN-10 081298675X
• ISBN-13 978-0812986754
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• Publisher ‏ : ‎ Dial Press Trade Paperback; Reprint edition (June 9, 2015)
• Language ‏ : ‎ English
• Paperback ‏ : ‎ 208 pages
• ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 081298675X
• ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0812986754
• Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 6.6 ounces
• Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5.47 x 0.6 x 8.19 inches
• #4,758 in Family Saga Fiction
• #5,096 in Mystery Action & Adventure
• #8,152 in Thriller & Suspense Action Fiction

About the author

James a. michener.

James Albert Michener (/ˈmɪtʃnər/; February 3, 1907 - October 16, 1997) was an American author of more than 40 books, the majority of which were fictional, lengthy family sagas covering the lives of many generations in particular geographic locales and incorporating solid history. Michener was known for the popularity of his works; he had numerous bestsellers and works selected for Book of the Month Club. He was also known for his meticulous research behind the books.

Michener's novels include Tales of the South Pacific for which he won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1948, Hawaii, The Drifters, Centennial, The Source, The Fires of Spring, Chesapeake, Caribbean, Caravans, Alaska, Texas and Poland. His non-fiction works include Iberia, about his travels in Spain and Portugal; his memoir titled The World Is My Home, and Sports in America. Return to Paradise combines fictional short stories with Michener's factual descriptions of the Pacific areas where they take place.

His first book was adapted as the popular Broadway musical South Pacific by Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein, and later as a film by the same name, adding to his financial success.

Bio from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Photo byRobert Wilson [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

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Customers find the book very good reading and easy to follow. They also describe the storyline as wonderful and insightful. Readers also appreciate the thorough character development and historical backdrop. Overall, customers find the content interesting and insightful, centered on an English group.

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Customers find the storyline wonderful, engrossing, and good reading. They also say it helps them remember history.

"...Once I started reading I could not stop. It is a wonderful adventure book but there is also a socio-psychological factor in it...." Read more

"...Overall it is an excellent story that deserved to be made a better and longer one." Read more

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"I have not finished the book yet, however it is well written and an easy read . I am enjoying the adventures of a group of Englishmen." Read more

Customers find the content insightful, intelligent, and inspiring. They also mention that the book centers on an English group of loyalty, camaraderie, intelligence, persistence, and ingenuity.

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"Pretty good story and very informative . The book allows for ones imagination to expand and feel adventurous...." Read more

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"...The main protagonists do not lack knowledge , honor or stamina...." Read more

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Trump Isn’t the Only One H.R. McMaster Takes to Task in His New Book

H.R. McMaster’s At War With Ourselves , a memoir of his 13 months as Donald Trump’s national security adviser, has aroused much attention for its stinging criticism of the former (and, God help us, possibly future) president. But the publicity and TV interviews have been too narrowly focused. McMaster also takes dead aim at a vast cast of others who got in his way or disagreed with his views: Secretaries of Defense and State Jim Mattis and Rex Tillerson; Trump’s mischief-makers Steve Bannon and Reince Priebus; his successor, John Bolton; White House chief of staff John Kelly; and, not least, Democratic Presidents Joe Biden and Barack Obama.

The hero of this well-written and entertaining tale is H.R. McMaster himself, and its grand theme is what a great shame it was that the president didn’t take his advice more often. It is an oddly presumptuous theme for a three-star general—a hero of both Iraq wars—who was, and is, more intellectual than most of his Army brethren but who had never worked in Washington or engaged in any policy issues outside the Middle East.

During the Iraq war, McMaster thoroughly studied the history and theory of counterinsurgency warfare, then applied his learnings as regiment commander in the province of Tal Afar with remarkable success. Entering Trump’s White House, he studied the handbooks and protocols on the division of responsibilities between the national security adviser and the various Cabinet secretaries—and thought his mastery would once again guide him to dominance.

He never grasped—and still doesn’t; not completely anyway—the vast divide between theory and reality in the minefields of Washington politics.

McMaster led teams of talented analysts in the NSC staff to write impressive documents on geopolitics, a new approach to China, and other weighty matters. Trump, of course, never read them (few presidents peruse such documents); his bureaucratic rivalries had their own priorities, which he was ill-equipped to reconcile. A deputy warns him early on in his tenure that Washington is “nothing like your experience in the military.” Here, she warns, “friends stab you in the chest.”

McMaster does emerge from his adventure with shrewd insights into the commander in chief’s failures, and it is these insights that have (rightly) boosted the book’s appeal. For instance: “Trump’s ego and insecurities” left him vulnerable to “flattery,” a fact easily exploited by Vladimir Putin, Kim Jong-il, the Saudi royal family, and his own lackeys, who viewed White House meetings as “exercises in competitive sycophancy,” in which common phrases included “Your instincts are always right” and “You are the only one who,” which encouraged Trump to “stray from the topic at hand or to say something outlandish—like ‘Why don’t we just bomb the drugs’ in Mexico or ‘Why don’t we take out the whole North Korean army during one of their parades.’ ”

Trump’s “lack of historical knowledge” made him susceptible to Xi Jinping’s self-serving account of Beijing’s rights to the South China Sea. The “fragility of his ego and his deep sense of aggrievement” made it particularly easy for Putin to “play him like a fiddle.”

Still, McMaster saw his role as helping to execute the president’s policies—a role bolstered by his insistence on remaining an active-duty officer (who has a legal obligation to carry out the president’s legal orders). And in this sense, he misunderstood the hostility mounted against him and the president by Mattis and Tillerson.

Both men—Mattis a retired Marine four-star general, Tillerson a former Exxon CEO—were supremely self-confident. They each expected McMaster to roll over to their demands; McMaster resisted, thinking his job was to coordinate administration policy. Mattis was especially condescending toward McMaster, viewing the relationship as that of a four-star to a three-star—and, in military culture, the supremacy of a four-star over a three-star is enormous.

McMaster viewed their connivances as purely a competition for “control.” But much more was going on. As we now know, and knew to a large extent at the time, Mattis and Tillerson viewed Trump as a danger who needed to be contained. Mattis spent much time traveling abroad, downplaying Trump’s America-first ramblings, assuring allies that the United States would always have their back; some thought his title should have been “secretary of reassurance.”

McMaster complains in the book that Mattis “slow-rolled” Trump’s requests for “contingency planning on North Korea and Iran.” What he omits from his account is that Trump wanted contingency planning for a military strike on those two countries; they thought that he really wanted to initiate a strike and that slow-rolling the request would restrain his impulse toward war. When Kelly, another retired general, started joining the private meetings with Mattis and Tillerson, McMaster thought, “Tillerson and Mattis have gotten to him. ” But in fact, what Kelly got was the supreme danger of Trump. And the three men left McMaster out of their cabal because they knew—in part because he still wore the uniform—that he’d sworn to take Trump’s side. McMaster reveals that, at one point, Kelly told an aide to let him know whenever McMaster was meeting alone with Trump.

McMaster understands all this to some degree. “Tillerson and Mattis were not just confident in themselves,” he writes near the end of the book. “They often lacked confidence in a president they regarded as impulsive, erratic, and dangerous to the republic.”

In a particularly revealing passage, McMaster writes that Trump’s incitement of insurrection on Jan. 6, 2021, “might be invoked as an ex post facto justification for their [Mattis’ and Tillerson’s] behavior. But in August 2017, I was just trying to help the elected president set his course.” In fact, Jan. 6 can be seen as evidence that the two Cabinet secretaries were right—and that by helping Trump set his course, McMaster was sharpening the danger.

But McMaster is correct that Mattis and Tillerson were incompetent plotters. “The more independent of the president and the White House they became,” he writes, “the less effective they would be.” And that is what happened. Tillerson was fired even before McMaster was. (He was a terrible secretary of state who, among other things, put the interests of ExxonMobil above those of the United States, perhaps in part because he saw them as identical.) Mattis was an insular defense secretary —he surrounded himself with fellow Marine officers, many of whom had served with him abroad—and had no idea how to deal either with the Pentagon’s civilians or with the people in the White House, whom he held in contempt, to his ultimate self-defeat.

It’s a shame: On the issues, Mattis and McMaster agreed on much. Had they worked together, they might have steered Trump in a more sustainably sensible direction. That they didn’t is more Mattis’ fault than McMaster’s. John Bolton had plenty of high-level bureaucratic experience; when he replaced McMaster at the White House, he shut Mattis out completely. (In a remarkable exchange in the book, which takes place when McMaster knew he was on the way out, he tells Mattis, “I hope you get John Bolton, because you deserve John Bolton.” A red-faced Mattis replies, “At ease, Lieutenant General”—“at ease” being a phrase that senior officers invoke to put subordinates in their place—“you can’t talk to me that way.”)

Still, in the book’s postscript, McMaster hopes “that young people who have persevered through these pages will conclude that, even under challenging circumstances, there are tremendous rewards associated with service under any administration.”

Alas, the case he presents for a rewarding experience, at least in the Trump administration, is flimsy. Earlier in the book, he notes, “Despite the frictions I was encountering,” he and his team “were helping Trump make sound decisions.” He cites as examples Trump’s “long-overdue correctives to unwise policies” toward China, Russia, North Korea, Cuba, and Iran.

He makes something of a point on China, where the administration was fairly unified in dropping the long-standing hope—held, to some extent, by every president since Nixon—that engagement would lure Beijing into the Western-dominated global system. But Trump’s correctives, mainly levying tariffs and launching a trade war, had little effect other than to hurt American consumers.

On the other areas, McMaster’s boast rings hollow. On Russia, Trump caved to Putin at every opportunity. On North Korea, after McMaster’s departure, and to Bolton’s frustration, Trump commenced a bromance with Kim Jong-un, again to no effect. His reimposition of sanctions on Cuba—which Obama had started to lift—helped nothing. Scuttling the nuclear deal with Iran had no effect on Tehran’s mullahs, except to spur them to revive their uranium-enrichment program, which the deal had halted.

It is worth delving a bit into McMaster’s comments on Cuba and Iran because they reveal, despite his harsh critique of Trump, a deeply partisan analyst.

He states that Obama pursued a policy of “accommodating Iran,” which had the effect of strengthening Hezbollah. He avoids noting that Obama retained several sanctions having to do with Iran’s missile program and its ties to terrorist groups. Nor does he note that under the nuclear deal, Iran was well on its way to dismantling its nuclear program under tight international inspections—until Trump scuttled the deal. As a result , Iran is now closer to building an atom bomb than it has ever been. (McMaster, by the way, writes in agreement with Trump that the accord was “the worst deal ever.”)

He also asserts that Biden would “resurrect the Obama policy of accommodating Iran”—a claim that is simply puzzling. Biden did not revive the Iran nuclear deal (though I was among many who urged him to do so ), nor did he relax the sanctions against Iran that Trump reimposed. Biden has also helped Israel defend and retaliate against Iran’s attempted attacks. Where is the accommodation?

In another utterly mystifying (and uncharacteristically far-right) jeremiad, McMaster writes that Obama’s attempt to normalize relations with Cuba stemmed from a “New Left interpretation of history at America’s top universities, where students learned that the world is divided into oppressors and oppressed and that geopolitics is a choice between socialist revolution and servitude under ‘capitalist imperialism.’ ” This is ridiculous. Obama’s policy was driven by a realization that America’s half-century-long isolation of Cuba had done nothing to change the regime and was only hurting the tiny island’s people. McMaster also writes, “Obama, like Trump, evinced an unseemly affinity for authoritarians”—a truly bizarre contention.

And so, while McMaster certainly won’t endorse Trump in the November elections or go work for him again (though there’s no chance, especially after this book, that he’d be asked), it’s also unlikely that he’ll endorse Kamala Harris. (He has said he’s not endorsing any candidate.)

One point of this book, I suspect, is rehabilitation. Back when he was an Army major, McMaster wrote a Ph.D. dissertation turned book, called Dereliction of Duty , about how senior officers in the 1960s deliberately misled President Lyndon B. Johnson on the war in Vietnam, telling him what he wanted to hear rather than giving him their honest military advice, thus betraying their constitutional obligations.

A few months into his term in Trump’s White House, McMaster was ordered to go talk to the press about reports that, at a meeting in the Oval Office, Trump had revealed classified information to top Russian officials. McMaster recited a carefully written, very deceptive script: a “non-denial denial.” One of his former colleagues told me at the time that the statement left him “heartbroken.” A fellow retired Army officer mused, “I wonder what title will be given to the book written about him .” I should add that, in the book, McMaster refers to the column I wrote at the time:

The journalist Fred Kaplan, who wrote an essay entitled “The Tarnishing of H.R. McMaster,” stated that I “had been all but incapable of guile” but was “now soaked in the swamp of deceit in the service of Trump.” I was more amused than offended at his hyperbolic criticism.

The book doesn’t come clean about what really happened; most readers, who won’t remember the incident, will be left confused.

Still, At War With Ourselves provides McMaster—now a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University—a chance to cut all ties with Trump, to point out the many times that he openly disagreed with Trump and tried to push Trump in the right direction, occasionally successfully. It’s an attempt to set the record straight and to fix for himself an honorable legacy, very different from that of the generals and admirals who abetted Lyndon Johnson’s horrors in Vietnam. In that, he has for the most part succeeded.

Correction, Sept. 3, 2024: This piece originally misidentified Kim Jong-un as Kim Jong-il.

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BLUE SISTERS , by Coco Mellors

“A sister is not a friend.” So begins Coco Mellors’s sophomore novel, “Blue Sisters,” whose three adult protagonists are in a constant fight — with one another, with their various addictions, with their own worst selves. For Mellors, it’s these fights that define sisterhood, as “tough, sinuous, unlovely, yet essential” as an umbilical cord: “You’re part of each other, right from the start.”

In lush, cozy prose, Mellors guides us into the lives of Avery, Bonnie and Lucky Blue, reuniting to clean out their childhood apartment in New York City on the first anniversary of their sister Nicky’s death. Between the ages of 26 and 33, all three lead extreme lives that sometimes feel out of step with a domestic novel that otherwise seems to celebrate the beauty of the mundane. Avery, the oldest, lives with her wife in London, where she became a successful corporate lawyer after quitting heroin. The second sister, Bonnie, is a champion boxer turned bouncer in Los Angeles whose “drugs of choice are sweat and violence.” The youngest, Lucky, has been a model since she was 15, and lives in Paris. “She has said the words I need a drink 132 times so far this year.”

Nicky’s life was comparatively quiet: The sensitive sister with “a carnival of feelings she never tried to hide,” she lived on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, where she taught high school English “10 blocks from where she grew up,” and longed to become a mother. As the sisters reckon with losing her — to an overdose of the painkillers she took in secret, for the chronic pain caused by her endometriosis — they must also come to terms with their own relationships to addiction, which “whirred through all of them like electricity through a circuit.”

Avery’s “boring,” perfectly constructed, sober life starts to crack under the weight of her grief when she cheats on her wife, Chiti — a 40-year-old therapist who pressures her to have a child — with Charlie, a poet she meets in Alcoholics Anonymous. Lucky’s 20-something, fashion-party debauchery — doing drugs in bathrooms, hooking up with strangers, living “in the moment and just a few seconds ahead” — only leaves her feeling more alone, wanting “to feel nothing — to be nothing.”

Bonnie, who’s never had a drink in her life, describes herself as addicted to “pain”; and in the aftermath of finding Nicky’s dead body — “she looked like something that had just spilled, like a vase of violets tipped over” — she takes her rage out on a racist patron at the bar she works at, beating him to a pulp. Even back in New York, the same physical energy emerges when Bonnie tackles Lucky to the ground in an effort to keep her sober (“she had been too rough, just like when they were kids”), and then again in an explosive fight with both of her sisters that begins over a T-shirt Nicky saved from a Spice Girls reunion tour they all attended as kids.

For all of Avery’s A.A. rhetoric about giving herself up to a “higher power,” it’s Bonnie who confesses to actually believing in one, a godlike figure who is “someone for me to talk to,” she tells them self-consciously at the end of the book, after the three have made up from the T-shirt fight. “I think they’re looking after Nicky until we get to see her again.”

Whether or not Avery and Lucky believe that too, the conversation itself has its own power, like the “fit of giggles” the three fall into during Nicky’s funeral, “inopportune and inappropriate” but a necessary comfort — “Nicky would have laughed too.”

Though not all of Mellors’s metaphors land (addicts are compared to mice; both “didn’t have collarbones”) and her prose can collapse into sentimentality, she is nonetheless able to capture the ferality, stickiness and beauty of both sisterhood and grief. As Avery tells Lucky about A.A.: “Yes, the slogans were cheesy, but they came in surprisingly handy.” The words have their roles, and the sisters have theirs.

BLUE SISTERS | By Coco Mellors | Ballantine | 342 pp. | $30

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