“In Chinese if you want to say that something good may turn into something bad or vice versa, you say ‘Sai weng shi ma,’ or ‘The old man at the frontier has lost his horse.’ ”
Lucy Wu wishes that she had never said she thought this year would be perfect. Because as we all know, things rarely go as you plan. Instead of having a bedroom all to herself, Lucy finds she’ll have to share with her long-lost great-aunt, Yi Po. And she doesn’t plan on liking Yi Po at all. No one can replace her beloved grandmother who has passed away. Not to mention her whole life is going to be wrecked now that her parents want her to go to Chinese school instead of play basketball. But no year is either completely perfect or completely ruined, and Lucy makes her way through many ups and downs during her sixth grade year.
This is a really excellent book and I can’t recommend it highly enough. Lucy is a nuanced character with varied interests and obligations. It’s great to see a depiction of a girl that loves sports and has academic strengths and interests as well as family commitments. So many actual girls have this richness and complexity of character, it’s always nice to see it happen in print as well.
Age Recommendation: Grades 4 and up, although some very advanced third graders might be able to master it.
Sex, Nudity, Dating – The girls have crushes on boys and “like” them. Older brother Kenny has a girlfriend. A coach and his wife are expecting a child and go to child-birth classes. Lucy and her friends know that it has taken them awhile and have overheard the grown-ups whispering about IVF and hormone injections.
Profanity – None.
Death, Violence and Gore – In a cautionary tale a boy breaks his legs and people are killed in battle. A girl arranges it so a chair collapses under another student. There is historical information about how the Japanese killed millions of Chinese. The Red Army is also mentioned, including details about their ruthless treatment of people during the revolution.
Drugs, Alcohol and Smoking – Lucy finds a picture of her father when he was in college and he is smoking in the photograph.
Frightening or Intense Things – There is a lot of bullying here. The end result is positive, but I think the sheer nastiness of middle-school girls really comes across in this book. What may seem overblown to people who have forgotten what it is to be that age will seem very real to kids who live through it every day. It especially rings true (in an incredibly sad way) when the children who are experiencing the bullying choose not to tell adults because they worry about retaliation from their bullies. In this case, while the bullying is not purely racist in motive, it becomes racist in tone.
I hadn’t realized that bullying was a theme in this book; it’s on my TBR list because it’s a Cybils finalist. I’m looking forward to reading it.