LITTLE GREEN
Growing Up During the Chinese Cultural Revolution
by Chun Yu
Born the year that the Cultural Revolution started, Little Green bore witness through her entire childhood to this terrible time in China’s history. With her father sent away for reeducation, she and her siblings were split at different times between her grandmother in the countryside, or with her mother in the city. Told in free verse that successfully evokes the setting and emotion of a child’s view, the story follows Little Green through moments of her first ten years, giving readers a highly engaging peephole into a very different kind of childhood. For a similar audience as Ji-Li Jiang’s Red Scarf Girl (1997), readers will find Chun Yu’s autobiographical story a completely different reading experience, and will appreciate this debut of a vivid and lyrical voice. (Fiction. 10-adult)