Great book for any school library. This book handles the 1871 LA Chinatown Massacre with grace and facts. The illustrations fit the story without being gory, making it suitable for elementary and middle school libraries. There are names and short looks into the lives of people who were killed, helping to humanize those who were murdered.

At the end of the picture book story is a summary of the reports of the massacre and a bibliography for further reading.

Recommended age: 4-6th grade due to the subject

This honest review was given in exchange for an advanced copy of the book.

The 1871 Los Angeles Chinatown Massacre was a period of American history I was unaware of before reading "Dreams to Ashes", despite growing up in Southern California and learning about the Gold Rush in elementary school. This book should book would be a great addition to California history curriculum in elementary schools.
Author Livia Blackburne does a great job of explaining the historical background to the massacre and Nicole Xu's illustrations give the reader a better understanding of the environment at the time.
I especially appreciated the historic photos and the more in-depth description of the events at the end of the book.

Heartbreaking, but important. This story shocked me and I’m surprised more people are not aware of this part of our country’s history. I am glad to have read the book, but it is very sad to think about. We must make sure our history is not forgotten so it will not be repeated.

Thanks to the publisher and NetGalley for letting me review this book. The illustrations were great. This book sheds a light on the darker side of US history and how injustice is still prevalent today as it was back then. It’s sad that people get caught up in the craziness or stand by and do nothing as incidents like in the book happen all the time.

The illustrations in this book are stunning, but the topic is dark. Most people probably don't know about early racism against Chinese people, or the massacre that is the subject of this book, but it is important to learn about our history to make sure we don't repeat it. Even when tensions were high, justice was out of reach for the innocents who lost their lives. This would be a book that children can discuss with their parents and teachers, covering topics like how life is different today and what could have been done better.
Thanks to NetGalley for letting me read this

This is a great way to make this part of US, specifically Los Angeles history accessible to younger audiences. This wasn’t a part of history I’d heard before, but sadly it doesn’t surprise me given other historical massacres on top of American responses to Chinese (and other Asian) people in 2020 and since due to Covid-19. The art really added to the intensity of the story. Now I want to do some more reading on this event.

When I was doing research on the historical novel I was working on, about the Chinese in California in the 1800s, I wanted to know every evil that was done to them. The massacre that happened in Los Angeles was one I read about. This picture book about the incident explains it in clear plain language, a thing that was so horrible, it is not mentioned even when learning local history.

The sad thing about history is that it repeats itself, and if we don’t learn from it, we are doomed to have the same thing happen all over again. Just as now there are some that say that anyone who isn’t white are scum and bring illness and crime, so did the local papers do in the late 1800s. They also said that the Chinese were taking the white people’s jobs, even though the Chinese did the work that no one else wanted to do. The cooking, the cleaning, and the washing.

Beautifully illustrated book, about a truly horrible time in US history, that needs to be told.

Thanks to Netgalley for making this book available for an honest review. This book is coming out on the 4th of March 2025.