Title: Becoming Madame Mao Author: Anchee Min File Type: Mobi Subject:Fiction:Historical Description:Amazon.com ReviewMany writers have engaged in the project of rescuing female figures from history, but few have tackled such an unsympathetic character as Anchee Min does in her historical novel Becoming Madame Mao. Known as the White Boned Demon during her reign of terror in China, Madame Mao was blamed for countless bloody and vengeful executions she sought out those who had wronged her in the past and wiped them off the face of the earth. Eventually she was reviled in China and executed, even as her husband was revered as a hero.Before her stint as Maos first lady, Jiang Ching, as she was then known, was an actress, a singer, and a star in Communist films. Anchee Min grew up in Red China and watched Jiang Ching from afar she was fascinated by her for many years, by tales of her independence and strength, and by images of her beauty. In a way, the great villain and demon was a role model for Anchee Min, and her teenage devotion is the engine of her remarkable novel. Moving back and forth between stories of the actress and the evil dictator, Min complicates the Madame Mao of history.As a girl, Madame Mao narrowly escaped having her feet bound. The book opens with graphic descriptions of this process and of the ensuing infection that freed her. But if her feet were not bound, her spirit was. Reared by a mother who was the last concubine of a rich man, and a father who liked to hit his girls with shovels, Madame Mao as a young girl felt herself doomed I see my father hit Mother with a shovel. It happened suddenly. Without warning. I can hardly believe my eyes. He is mad. He calls Mother a slut. Mothers body curls up. My chest swells. He hits her back, front, shouting that he will break her bones. The father then goes on to treat his daughter the same way. Decades later, when Madame Mao manifests deep brutality, Min seems to be saying that what goes around comes around. Flawed by a clumsy structure that vacillates between third and first person arbitrarily, Becoming Madame Mao is nevertheless an immensely interesting work--defiant, morally ambiguous, and difficult to put down. --Emily WhiteFrom Publishers WeeklyHistorical fiction acquires new luster and credibility in Mins brilliant evocation of the woman who married Mao and fought to succeed him. As she proved in her memoir, Red Azalea, Min is a forceful writer, but her first novel, Katherine, did not prepare us for the highly dramatic, psychologically penetrating and provocative narrative she presents here. A girl called Yunhe is born to a rural concubine in 1919 she renames herself Lan Ping when, in 1934, she runs away to Shanghai with ambitions to be an actress, and later joins the Red Army and finally, she is dubbed Jiang Ching by the man she marries, Mao Zedong. Madame Mao has become a myth, but Min has the background and the insight to imagine her afresh, and to create a complex psychological portrait of a driven, passionate woman and a period of history in which she would suffer, rise and prosper, and then fall victim to her own insatiable thirst for power. Min draws Madame Mao with bold, arresting strokes, gives her a fierce, imperious voice and a personality devoid of humility or self-knowledge. Lan Ping sets out to seduce the charismatic Mao, and wins him--for a time--until her jealousy, the machinations of his trusted aides, and Maos own loss of interest cast her into limbo. By then a veteran of the inner circle betrayals that Mao encouraged, Jiang Chings attempts to wrest personal power, but that becomes her undoing. As with a fine ink brush, Min details her heroines series of love affairs and marriages, divorces and acrimonious partings, roles in Chinese opera and movies, endurance in the shadow of Maos disfavor, desperate ploys to regain his attention, and brief time in the limelight during the Cultural Revolution. As a chronicle of ambition, betrayal, murder, revenge, barbaric cruelty, paranoia and internecine rivalry, the narrative speeds through its turbulent time frame 1919-1991. But it is foremost a character study of a determined, vindictive, rage-filled, cruel and emotionally needy woman who flourished because she reinvented herself as an actress in different, self-defined roles-- and because China was ready for her. Min uses several effective prose devices to spin her narrative at top speed. Short first- and third-person vignettes juxtapose Madame Maos early experience with the comments of an omniciscient narrator who relates pivotal circumstances to events that will grow from their consequences. Such foreshadowing not only raises tension, it also helps readers construct a mental chart of historical figures and events. Striking metaphors and vivid Chinese proverbs enhance Mins tensile prose, but it is her trenchant comments about the ways in which powerful individuals can paint bold colors on the panorama of history that distinguishes her spellbinding novel. Agent, Sandra Dijkstra. 10-city author tour. (June) 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Title: The Blue Helmet Author: William Bell File Type: Mobi Subject:Fiction:Young Adult Description:ReviewWinner of the 2007 CLA young adult canadian book awardbr An OLA top ten best bet for schools and libraries “William Bell is arguably one of the most wide-ranging and reliable of Canadian authors. His range is impressive. So is the high quality of his writing.” br —_Books in Canada_ “strongThe Blue Helmetstrong reminds the reader that all actions have consequences, and that one must take responsibility. . . . Bell has created a fast-paced and moving story of a teen trying to find his place in the world.” br — (Highly Recommended) CM magazine From the Trade Paperback edition.Lee wants to be a Tarantula – a member of the biggest, most powerful gang in his neighbourhood. But when his initiation goes wrong and the police catch him robbing an auto supply store, Lee’s father sends him to live with his aunt in New Toronto. Lee feels more lost than ever. His mother’s death from cancer, and his father’s constant absence working two jobs mean he has practically had to raise himself. But though he initially resists his Aunt Reena and the customers of Reena’s Unique Café – a ragtag collection of the unusual, the unkempt and the deeply eccentric – Lee gradually learns to open himself up to his new surroundings. When Lee strikes up an unlikely friendship he is suddenly confronted by the ravages of violence, and is forced to face the consequences of his own aggression. strongThe Blue Helmetstrong is a powerful portrait of one young man’s struggle to come into his own, and the peace that comes from the achievement.