A lively, engaging tale with relatable tween concerns and themes of friendship and self-worth.
Unexpected friendships help a tween reclaim her creativity in this middle-grade novel set in contemporary Shanghai.
Tackling sixth grade math and living up to parental academic expectations are bad enough, but for almost-12-year-old Xu Haiqing, there are worse problems. She feels estranged from her best friend, Xia Luolan, who left Shanghai to move with her family to Massachusetts. And the tween feels sad and guilty that since her beloved Laoye (grandfather), a master Chinese calligrapher, died, she has not practiced the art herself. Movingly, calligraphy had been a bond between them from the time she picked up a brush at age 3. When Haiqing is encouraged by friends to attend a Chinese calligraphy class, her parents say no. Making art has no place on the path her career-driven mother has mapped out for her daughter’s academic and corporate success. How can Haiqing reclaim “the person I was two years ago and make Laoye proud”? This energetic and relatable first-person narrative is written with an observant eye for time and place in the everyday life of a Chinese tween wrestling with peer relationships, strict parents, dictatorial teachers, academic pressures, and dreams and challenges that seem hopeless. The deft narrative weave does loosen somewhat when portraying Haiqing’s efforts to help a young violinist with stage fright. Intended to propel Haiqing to find her own confidence and her way back to her art—and to mend her friendship with Luolan—this overly involved subplot (secret meetings, eavesdropping, text exchanges, a hidden recording attempt) takes center stage for too long. It’s difficult, too, to attribute sincerity to the instigator of these clandestine meetings and actions, a boy who stabs classmates’ arms with a freshly sharpened pencil as a joke. But despite these missteps, Shao knows whereof she writes. She’s a middle schooler and, like Luolan, a transplant from Shanghai to Massachusetts. The author’s first novel, The Xia Stories: Once in a Lifetime (2019), about Luolan adjusting to life in the United States, was published when she was 10. A sprinkling of Mandarin words is explained in the text and in a glossary.
A lively, engaging tale with relatable tween concerns and themes of friendship and self-worth.Pub Date: April 30, 2021
ISBN: 979-8-7428-5522-4
Page Count: 335
Publisher: Self
Review Posted Online: Sept. 3, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2022
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
Explanatory note; reading list.
Yep illuminates the Chinese immigrant experience here and abroad in a follow-up to The Serpent's Children (1984) and Mountain Light (1985).
After accidentally killing one of the hated Manchu soldiers, Otter (14) flees Kwangtung for the "Golden Mountain"; he finds his adoptive father Squeaky and Uncle Foxfire in the Sierra Nevada, where thousands of "Guests" are laboriously carving a path for the railroad. Brutal cold, dangerous work, and a harsh overseer take their toll as Squeaky is blinded in a tunnel accident, Foxfire is lost in a storm, and other workers are frozen or half-starved. By the end, toughened in body and spirit, Otter resolves never to forget them or their sacrifices. Foxfire and Otter consider themselves only temporary residents here, preparing for the more important work of modernizing their own country while ridding it of Manchu, Europeans, and, especially, the scourge of opium. America is a dreamlike place; English dialogue is printed in italics as a tongue foreign to most of the characters; and though Otter befriends the overseer's troubled son, such social contact is discouraged on both sides. In a story enlivened with humor and heroism, Yep pays tribute to the immigrants who played such a vital role in our country's history.
Explanatory note; reading list. (Fiction. 11-14)Pub Date: Oct. 30, 1993
ISBN: 0-06-022971-3
Page Count: 276
Publisher: HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 1993
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
This is no didactic near-future warning of present evils, but a cinematic adventure featuring endearing, compelling heroes
A gripping thriller in dystopic future Los Angeles.
Fifteen-year-olds June and Day live completely different lives in the glorious Republic. June is rich and brilliant, the only candidate ever to get a perfect score in the Trials, and is destined for a glowing career in the military. She looks forward to the day when she can join up and fight the Republic’s treacherous enemies east of the Dakotas. Day, on the other hand, is an anonymous street rat, a slum child who failed his own Trial. He's also the Republic's most wanted criminal, prone to stealing from the rich and giving to the poor. When tragedies strike both their families, the two brilliant teens are thrown into direct opposition. In alternating first-person narratives, Day and June experience coming-of-age adventures in the midst of spying, theft and daredevil combat. Their voices are distinct and richly drawn, from Day’s self-deprecating affection for others to June's Holmesian attention to detail. All the flavor of a post-apocalyptic setting—plagues, class warfare, maniacal soldiers—escalates to greater complexity while leaving space for further worldbuilding in the sequel.
This is no didactic near-future warning of present evils, but a cinematic adventure featuring endearing, compelling heroes . (Science fiction. 12-14)Pub Date: Nov. 29, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-399-25675-2
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: April 8, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2011
BOOK TO SCREEN
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