When Xin starts dreaming of the characters in the Chinese stories her grandmother told her, she realizes there is a lot more to her life.
Xin Long is an ordinary ten year old girl who loves breaking the rules and driving everyone, including her teachers, insane. She says what she thinks and likes to listen to her grandmother's stories, even though Ah Ma is a little "See-Nile" and repeats herself. At the start of the New Year, Xin Long goes back to school to see her enemies, and she realizes that they were a lot more of them than she thought, especially since some of them aren't mortal. In this first book, Xin goes on a journey of self-discovery, and learns that showing fear is not cowardly, and that monsters are never as terrifying as they are made out to be.