![]() That seems to be a trend with many of the protagonists in this series, I'm finding. Really, if I didn't know she was supposed to be twelve years old, I would've thought she was much older. ![]() She's pretty much perfect at everything (except for sewing, I guess?) and not a chapter goes by in which she isn't impressing someone with her wit and bravery. Spring Pearl as a character was just okay. Having a preexisting connection to this book made the material much easier to digest. I thought I had retained nothing from that class, so it was a pleasant surprise to find that I recognized many of the events that were going on during that time. This book took place in China during the Opium Wars, which is a topic I studied in one of my college classes. I think even older readers would enjoy this book if they are fans of history, especially if they like books like the Dear America series. SPRING PEARL is the type of middle grade I really enjoy because it doesn't condescend to its audience. Pearl is twelve but she feels much older. I see that it is published by American Girl publishing, and that was especially nice because most of their characters were white, so it is nice to see them branching out and trying to be more diverse, and especially being diverse by hiring authors of color to write these stories rather than giving them to a white person. I liked how history was incorporated into the story and all the little details about Chinese culture. ![]() Pearl tries to protect her new family to the best of her ability, but nothing reduces the differences of class like revolution, and the more she learns about the Sungs, the more she grows to like and respect them. Master Sung is arrested as a traitor and looters run amok in the streets. When war breaks out, things quickly become chaotic. At first, the wife and daughters are resentful, and Pearl feels homesick and out of place, but she quickly begins to show how useful she is with her gardening abilities, English skills, and neat penmanship. ![]() She is sent to one of her father's friends, Master Sung and his wife, and their three daughters and one son. Set during the First Opium War, SPRING PEARL is the story of Chou Spring Pearl, a twelve-year-old orphan who was the daughter of an artist/scholar and a seamstress. Instagram || Twitter || Facebook || Amazon || Pinterest Today as well as writing, he has taught writing and Asian American Studies at the University of California, Berkeley and Santa Barbara. in English from the State University of New York at Buffalo in 1975. After two years at Marquette University, Yep transferred to the University of California at Santa Cruz where he graduated in 1970 with a B.A. However, it was while attending high school that he started writing for a science fiction magazine, being paid one cent a word for his efforts. During high school he faced the white American culture for the first time. Other students at the school, according to Yep, labeled him a "dumbbell Chinese" because he spoke only English. They later married and now live in San Francisco.Īlthough not living in Chinatown, Yep commuted to a parochial bilingual school there. Joanne Ryder, a children's book author, and Yep met and became friends during college while she was his editor. ![]() He was in his own words his neighborhood's "all-purpose Asian" and did not feel he had a culture of his own. Growing up in San Francisco, Yep felt alienated. After troubling times during the Depression, he was able to open a grocery store in an African-American neighborhood. Yep's father, Thomas, was born in China and came to America at the age of ten where he lived, not in Chinatown, but with an Irish friend in a white neighborhood. Franche Lee, her family's youngest child, was born in Ohio and raised in West Virginia where her family owned a Chinese laundry. Born Jin San Francisco, California, Yep was the son of Thomas Gim Yep and Franche Lee Yep. ![]()
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