A welcome addition to the growing strong-women-in-history shelf.
From stolen bride to pirate queen: a young woman’s rise to become the most powerful pirate in history.
When pirate Zheng Yi and his crew raid the port city of Canton, they plunder both goods and women. Zheng Yi picks one girl to be his bride. Boldly, Zheng Yi Sao (meaning “Zheng Yi’s wife”) shoots him a stipulation: She will marry him only “if he [gives her] an equal share in his enterprise.” Six years later, Zheng Yi is dead, and his widow now commands 70,000 men and over 1,800 ships. Zheng Yi Sao realizes that a queen can’t “win at cards” alone. She must “strengthen [her] hand by drawing from [her] decks,” winning the loyalty of Zheng’s lieutenants by sharing power. Before long, South China’s seas come under her control, and even the emperor’s ships are no match for Zheng Yi Sao’s Red Flag Fleet. Eventually, Zheng Yi Sao grows tired of life at sea. With the same defiance and boldness that she employed so long ago, she demands her freedom from the governor-general of Canton. There is little primary documentation about Zheng Yi Sao’s life, as Becker states in a concluding note, but working with what’s known she has woven together a poetic first-person story that’s both believable and readable. Wong’s stylized pencil illustrations highlight intricate details that epitomize turn-of-the-19th-century China, a restrained palette providing color.
A welcome addition to the growing strong-women-in-history shelf. (sources, further references, note on names) (Picture book. 6-9)Pub Date: March 3, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-77306-124-5
Page Count: 36
Publisher: Groundwood
Review Posted Online: Dec. 7, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2020
Younger readers who prefer their tales of knightly valor straight up should eschew this droll, double-stranded import. Expressing doubts that King Alfred really burnt those cakes, or that Canute got wet feet, Wilson proceeds in paired cartoon panels to deliver a rhymed official rendition and a slangy factual account of how young Dave the peasant drove a fearsome beast out of Princess Peach’s bedchamber—thus, naturally, earning her hand in marriage. Dave’s quick-thinking mother expedites the process, determining that the “horrid creature” squeaks and is fond of cheese, but persuading the suspicious King Arfwitt and Queen Girdlestein that it’s a dragon nonetheless, then letting nature take its course with the young folk. Wilson outfits every character with eyeglasses, “arms” Dave with a wooden sword and a bucket for a helmet (“you look a right wally,” his mom observes), and encloses verses, dialogue and the frequent asides in balloons. Children trained to expect action on every page may find the episode a bit wordy and slow-going, but there’s certainly food for thought here, as well as an amiable, silly story. (Picture book. 7-9)
Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2006
ISBN: 1-84507-496-3
Page Count: 36
Publisher: Frances Lincoln
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2006
The first broad release of a title originally published regionally and overseas in 1999, this simply told, deeply affecting tale follows a teddy’s passage from hand to hand through war and other troubles. First given to David, a German child who passes it to his close friend Oskar when he and his Jewish family are taken away, the bear is picked from a pile of bomb rubble by an African-American GI. In the States it becomes a girl’s prized companion until snatched by neighborhood ruffians and cast into the trash. Rescued, it then spends many years in the window of an antiques store until a passerby—none other than a now-elderly Oskar—recognizes a distinctive ink stain on its head and rushes in to buy it. This sparks a newspaper story, which leads to a stunning phone call and the joyful reunion of bear, Oskar and David. Subtle changes of facial expression in Ungerer’s watercolor art give the bear—stained, battered and with a clumsily repaired bullet hole—plenty of character, and there’s nary a trace of sentimentality in the matter-of-fact narrative. (Picture book. 6-8)
Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2010
ISBN: 0714857661
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Phaidon
Review Posted Online: Aug. 12, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2010
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