Gloria Whelan

I think this book is magnificent! The passage of time is very fluid and not at all choppy. I loved the artistic work that was done, along with the love poured into the book to create it. I hope that one day, having this book in my classroom library won't be such a big deal, but right now I'm afraid that the backlash of parents will not make this an easy book to keep on my classroom library shelves due to the religious nature of the book. I am very hopeful as a young teacher that I can spin my own story of why this is a great book for my classroom and students that it won't matter there is a Christian tone to it.… (mer)

READING LEVEL: 5.2 AR POINTS: 6.0
(Ages 8-12, grades 5-6)

I absolutely loved this historical novel written for young readers and will pass it onto one of my granddaughters. I feel like this is a book that will be hard to find in a few more years because, as I'm sure it is censored in China, it will most likely be censored by the woke cancel culture here in the United States because it highlights communist China's law of the two-child policy, which encouraged abortion and/or abandonment of unwanted or extra children.

Chu Lu is fourteen years old and is the first-born. When her mother is pregnant for the second time and delivers another girl, the parents start discussing their only option of putting the baby girl into an orphanage so they can try for a boy. Boys are more prized in China because they have more opportunities to add to the family fortune where girls are considered more of a drag on the family fortune and just another mouth to feed.

Chu Lu named and cared for her newborn baby sister, Hua. She fell in love with her and couldn't stand to even think about her being sent away. So, Chu Lu decided to leave home so that Hua could stay with the family.

This is the account of Chu Lu's life as she finds and works her way through a fisherman's family working on a fishing boat, the deplorable conditions on a silk worm farm, and finally into an old woman's heart by helping her plant, weed and grow her little rice paddy farm when her son left it all for the big city, Shanghai. Chu Lu would end up inheriting this 5-acre piece of land and fall in love, which, since this was written for young readers, was only insinuated, but ended perfectly.

THE FACTS: China's two-child policy was ended in 1970, but replaced with the one-child policy because of the population explosion through 1976. In 2015, China ended its one-child policy and returned to the two-child policy. Women were forced into contraceptive devices, such as the IUD, after their first child. If they were found to be pregnant again, they were heavily fined and sterilized so they could never have children again. These policies led to sex-selective abortions and also the reason for the huge number of children, mainly girls, being abandoned and ending up in orphanages.

Today, in 2021, they have gone from a two-child to a three-child policy.… (mer)