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. ( )

In China, rural families are only allowed to have 2 children, and boys are valued far more than girls. When Chu Ju's family has another girl, Chu Ju runs away so that her family will not sell her baby sister; they will have only 1 girl again. Chu Ju first finds herself accepted by a family of fishermen, who teach her all about fishing. However, they already have their allotted number of children, so once again, Chu Ju must leave. Next she finds herself working at a silk worm farm with other "orphan" girls, under a harsh woman who clearly loves the worms more than the girls. Chu Ju finds friendship with the other girls, but, once again must leave. She finally arrives, starving, at the home of a woman and her son, who are rice farmers. The son only wants to move to Shanghai, and hates farming. Chu Ju and the mother develop a close bond, and she finally finds a "family".

This book describes the effects of the Chinese Cultural Revolution as lived out by a teenaged girl. It is a quick read, and a decent introduction to a horrifying period of Chinese history. ( )

Juvenile fiction book about a Chinese girl that runs away because her parents have another baby girl and are going to sell her. The 14-year-old can't stand the thought of the baby being sold so she sacrifices herself. The story continues around what happens to her. Good descriptions of living in rural China. ( )

In rural China, only two children are allowed per family and every family wants at least one boy. Chu Ju knows that her parents will send her newborn sister away if she stays, so she runs away. As in Whelan's other books, she sents the reader to rural China, a place that few people outside the region know about. Excellent read, except the ending seemed a bit tacked on and unrealistic. Inexplicably and likely unrealistically, everything suddenly works out perfectly in the end for everyone ( )