Sing to the Dawn is a 1975 story by Minfong Ho

Minfong Ho

Minfong Ho is an award-winning Chinese American writer. Her works frequently deal with the lives of people living in poverty in Southeast Asian countries...

, which was originally published as a short story

Short story

A short story is a work of fiction that is usually written in prose, often in narrative format. This format tends to be more pointed than longer works of fiction, such as novellas and novels. Short story definitions based on length differ somewhat, even among professional writers, in part because...

 and won the first prize in the Council of Interracial Books for Children. It was later extended to a full-length novel

Novel

A novel is a book of long narrative in literary prose. The genre has historical roots both in the fields of the medieval and early modern romance and in the tradition of the novella. The latter supplied the present generic term in the late 18th century....

.
Dawan, a young village girl lives in Thailand

Thailand

Thailand , officially the Kingdom of Thailand , formerly known as Siam , is a country located at the centre of the Indochina peninsula and Southeast Asia. It is bordered to the north by Burma and Laos, to the east by Laos and Cambodia, to the south by the Gulf of Thailand and Malaysia, and to the...

, wins a scholarship

Scholarship

A scholarship is an award of financial aid for a student to further education. Scholarships are awarded on various criteria usually reflecting the values and purposes of the donor or founder of the award.-Types:...

 to study in the city school. Her brother, Kwai, places second and is initially jealous, causing a rift between the two previously-close siblings.