Honest, vulnerable, and full of heart.
In this graphic memoir set in China, Huang documents her childhood move from rural Xintian to bustling, big-city Guangzhou.
In Xintian, young Yinfan is surrounded by family and nature and encouraged to explore, experiment, create art, and stand out. Once she enters primary school, however, she must tamp down her self-expression when she struggles with her schoolwork. Just as she’s started to adapt, her parents find new jobs in Guangzhou, leaving her in the care of her grandparents. She eventually rejoins her parents. They initially share an apartment with relatives, who criticize everything from the way Yinfan brushes her teeth to how her mother washes the dishes. Later, they move to a ninth-floor walk-up, where she experiences a home invasion and meets, then loses, her first friend. Though marked by loneliness and uncertainty, these years in Guangzhou are also full of small rebellions, as when Yinfan passes notes in class and wears braids, which violate the strict dress code. Huang’s bold, comics-style watercolor art, in shades of coral and jade, capture and confront Yinfan’s youthful struggle to be comfortable in her own skin; while she doesn’t shy away from humiliating or painful episodes, she also fully celebrates moments of joy. Simultaneously specific and relatable, Yinfan’s story will resonate with readers still seeking their own ways to belong. Simplified Chinese text appears throughout, occasionally translated.
Honest, vulnerable, and full of heart. (Graphic memoir. 11-14)Pub Date: June 3, 2025
ISBN: 9781525305511
Page Count: 184
Publisher: Kids Can
Review Posted Online: March 22, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
Born in 1880 in a tiny backwater in Alabama, Helen Keller lived a life familiar to many from the play and movie The Miracle Worker, as well as countless biographies. There’s no denying the drama in the story of the deaf and blind child for whom the world of language became possible through a dedicated and fanatically stubborn teacher, Annie Sullivan. But Helen’s life after that is even more remarkable: she went to high school and then to Radcliffe; she was a radical political thinker and a member of the Wobblies; she supported herself by lecture tours and vaudeville excursions as well as through the kindness of many. Dash (The Longitude Prize, p. 1483) does a clear-sighted and absorbing job of examining Annie’s prickly personality and the tender family that she, Helen, and Annie’s husband John Macy formed. She touches on the family pressures that conspired to keep Helen from her own pursuit of love and marriage; she makes vivid not only Helen’s brilliant and vibrant intelligence and personality, but the support of many people who loved her, cared for her, and served her. She also does not shrink from the describing the social and class divisions that kept some from crediting Annie Sullivan and others intent on making Helen into a puppet and no more. Riveting reading for students in need of inspiration, or who’re overcoming disability or studying changing expectations for women. (Biography. 10-14)
Pub Date: Feb. 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-590-90715-8
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Scholastic
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2000
More a historical narrative than a character portrait, this account of Tecumseh’s efforts to create a tribal confederacy in the Old Northwest focuses on the great Shawnee leader’s many battles and negotiations with then–Territorial Governor William Henry Harrison and then his disastrous—ultimately fatal—alliance with the British during the War of 1812. Replete with side essays on such varied subtopics as the Northwest Territory, the New Madrid earthquakes of 1811-12 and the Battle of Lake Erie, it also boasts often–full-color illustrations from archival sources (many of these later paintings and old prints that are inaccurate, as the discursive captions often rightly note, and sometimes too small to make out anyway). In all, this will provide students a coherent view of events if not a clear understanding of Shawnee culture or Tecumseh’s heroic personal qualities. If it's not the 100-page holy grail of middle-grade biographies, it is still pretty close. (glossary, bibliography, source notes, index) (Biography. 11-13)
Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2010
ISBN: 978-1-4027-6847-7
Page Count: 124
Publisher: Sterling
Review Posted Online: Dec. 29, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2010
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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