Within weeks it reached the top of the New York Times list of best-selling children's books.

Swordbird is a fantasy about warring birds. It shows how friendship and courage can overcome tyranny.

Nancy did not learn English until she was seven and her family emigrated to the United States from China. Just a few years later she wrote a book in English, her first novel Swordbird, which soon became a best-seller.

Nancy Yi Fan's family moved to the United States a few months before the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. One night shortly afterwards, she dreamed about a giant white bird trying to make peace among warring flocks of birds in a forest.

"When I woke up," she said, "I wanted to turn my dream into a story because I wanted to express the importance of peace and freedom." It took her almost a year to complete her story, which she called Swordbird.
She then started sending her manuscript off to various publishers. "I only hoped to receive advice on how to improve my writing, but you know, Swordbird got accepted for publication," Nancy recalls. Jane Friedman, the chief executive of Harper Collins, a major U.S. publishing house, decided to give Nancy's story a chance. Harper Collins' children's division found it to be "absolutely brilliant", said Ms Friedman, who added, "We felt we had a prodigy in our hands. We took on the book, and the rest is history."

Nancy Yi Fan recently published her second novel, Sword Quest, whose story is set hundreds of years before Swordbird.

In Sword Quest, Nancy added a fortune teller who uses the yin and yang symbols [of Chinese philosophy and religion] and the fortune-telling sticks to guide some of the characters to a destination. Also, she says, a main character in the book was inspired by her grandmother's ghost stories about the spirits who stay in the crossroads and wait for people to cross the street.

Becoming a published author at such a young age, says Nancy, has affected her life in many ways. “I think it trained me to think more logically. It helped my imagination and certainly tested my determination, self-control and dedication. I discovered things like structure, preciseness of wording. Now when I write essays in school assignments, it's much easier for me.”

The youngest author ever published by Harper Collins hopes to continue writing. And Nancy Yi Fan says she will "use my wings" to go wherever her dreams take her.