The Jingu Magical Garden: A Crack in Time (Paperback) (ISBN-13: 9798993463506)

Ten-year-old Lillian Jingu wants to be like every other all-American girl. She wishes for a pet dog and to wear her hair long rather than in the China-doll bob her mother insists on. And she covets the gorgeous Stetson her friend, Terrellita Maveric, sports. But being the youngest girl in a Japanese American family of eight children living in the San Antonio Japanese Tea Garden, Lillian knows those dreams will probably never be realized. So, she is thrilled when she discovers a most unusual egg partially buried on the bank of the koi pond, and eagerly awaits whatever is inside it to hatch. She and her little brother, Kimi, are shocked when the egg hatches and a baby dragon emerges. But they soon fall in love with the tiny creature and conceal it in their grandmother's cricket cage. The baby dragon grows by leaps and bounds, and the children have all they can do to keep his existence a secret, for if it were to be found out, they know he would be locked up like a caged animal in the Brackenridge Zoo. But when he flies through the waterfall, disappearing through a crack in the wall, more adventures than they could ever imagine await them.