Bound

Bound
Author: Donna Jo Napoli
Publisher: Atheneum
ISBN-10: 0689861753
ISBN-13: 978-0689861758


Bound is the most wonderful Cinderella story I’ve ever had the pleasure of reading. It’s based on a classic Chinese tale and it is simply beautiful.

Xing Xing, also called Lazy One by her stepmother is lonely and mistreated after the death of her father. She often goes down to the pool near her family’s cave and communes with a beautiful white carp that she comes to believe holds the spirit of her dead mother. She dreams of poetry and practices her calligraphy whenever she can. Her stepsister Wei Ping lies in pain all day long due to her badly bound feet, so Xing Xing has to do all the work. When her stepmother sends her on a mission to sell medicine to a traveling doctor, Xing Xing’s adventures begin and she begins to find her own strength and value as a person.

Once she returns to her village, Xing Xing finds life even harder. Her stepmother kills the beautiful white carp and Xing Xing is devastated. She digs in the garbage heap to find the bones of the fish she believes was her mother reincarnated and then digs deep into the cave to hide the bones. In doing so, she finds a beautiful gown and other things her mother left there for her. Xing Xing wears the gown to a village festival and attracts the eye of a handsome prince.

Donna Jo Napoli writes such a strong and moving story. The characters are wonderfully complex and interesting. It’s an incredible survival story and one of great depth. While Bound is set in ancient China, the story is very much a 21st century story with a strong female heroine who stays true to herself in the face of incredible adversity.

About the Author:

Donna Jo Napoli is the acclaimed and award-winning author of many novels - both fantasies and contemporary stories. She won the Golden Kite Award for Stones in Water in 1997. Her novel Zel was named an American Bookseller Association Pick of the List, a Publishers Weekly Best Book, a BCCB Blue Ribbon, and a School Library Journal Best Book, and a number of her other novels have been slected as ALA Best Books. She is the head of the linguistics department at Swarthmore College in Pennsylvania, where she lives with her husband and their children.

American Born Chinese

American Born Chinese
Author: Gene Luen Yang
Publisher: First Second
ISBN: 1596431520

Graphic Novelist Gene Yang’s masterful blending of the three stories in this book was intelligent and emotional. There’s the legend of the Monkey King who wants to be revered as a god be worshipped above all others, a Caucasian teenaged boy named Danny who is ashamed of his Chinese cousin who seems to be one big jumbled up mess of painful stereotypes, and the story of Jin, a lonely Chinese-American boy who sits alone at lunch and feels left out and misunderstood. Each story is so skillfully woven into the others and it is completely compelling and absorbing.

Each story in American Born Chinese is filled with humor, life, wit and pathos. It’s very affecting. Jin’s struggles with alienation, race and identity are struggles that everyone goes through, in particular children of other cultures. We all feel the need to fit in and each of us has given up some small bit in order to do so. I think that’s what makes this book so fascinating. It tells the story of a young boy struggling with trying to fit in, fighting who he really is while trying to find out who he really is and ultimately finding self-acceptance.

I loved that the classic Chinese tale of the Monkey King is one of the stories that is woven into the others. It ties legend and myth to real life and it really worked with the other more contemporary plotlines.

The artwork is beautiful as well. Each illustration shows depth, color and emotion. The colors are warm and add dimension to the story.

About the Author:
Gene Yang began drawing comic books in the fifth grade. In 1997, he received the Xeric Grant, a prestigious comics industry grant, for Gordon Yamamoto and the King of the Geeks, his first comics work as an adult. He has since written and drawn a number of titles, including Duncan’s Kingdom (with art by Derek Kirk Kim) and The Rosary Comic Book.

He lives in the San Francisco Bay Area with his wife and son.