The Moonlight Trilogy, Chang Chia-Hua’s latest series for middle grade readers, brings to life Taiwan’s northern port town in three different periods of history. Mixing magic, folklore and historical fact, the Moonlight Trilogy uncovers the tragedies of three kinds of colonisation and war wrought on the locals, opening up questions of forgiveness and how we deal with the scars on our past.

The Tamsui Witch and Her Magic Map:
Chi-Hua Moon has received a letter from his aunt, begging for his help. The only thing is, the cloth on which it was written is over a hundred years old, and is no longer in production. Just then, he discovers a most precious and fantastic family heirloom; a deer skin map with magical powers to transport its owner through time and space. Before he knows it, Chi-Hua is back in the Tamsui of one hundred years ago and in perilous danger. Only then does he realise his aunt has been captured by a Galicean spell caster, because he wants to harness aunt and nephew to help him turn present-day Tamsui back to the Spanish…

The Prince and the Enchantress of Japan:
Aunt Moon and her nephew Chi-Hua are on a mission, to use the deer skin map to travel back to 1945 when Taiwan was still occupied by the Japanese and find a piece of black jade that went missing during the 1937 Nanking Massacre in China. But this is also a time of chaos, as war is drawing to a close across the globe and people are fleeing for safety. No one knows who is friend and who is foe, and somehow in the confusion, the spirit of the Japanese Prince Kitashirakawa Yoshihisa is disturbed after fifty years of rest. The Prince’s return, along with the help of a Japanese shrine maiden, has the power to change the course of history. If aunt and nephew don’t do something thick to stop them, millions could end up losing their lives…

The Boy Who Remembers and the Spirit Who Forgets:
A nameless spirit that has been lying at the bottom of the Tamsui River bed has awoken in a state of amnesia. What happened? How did he end up there? A boy, somehow young in age but with the silver-white hair of a man many years his senior, is trying to find out what happened to the father he lost in 1947. Taiwan had just been taken over by KMT military government from China. When the Taiwanese couldn’t stand the corrupt new government and the locals rebelled against them, bloodshed was widespread. A chance meeting with Aunt Moon and Chi-Hua results in a sudden chance to go back in time and solve the two mysteries. But can the aunt and nephew team heal scars now over sixty-five years old?