Chinese Cinderella

Chinese Cinderella. Adeline Yen Mah.  Delacorte Press. 1999.

This story is the autobiography of Adeline Yen Mah from age 5-14 years old.  She tells us about how she struggled to try to fit in with her family and make her father proud while growing up.  Adeline’s mother dies shortly after giving birth to her, which causes the rest of her family to consider her bad luck and treat her poorly.  The only way that Adeline is able to make her father proud and receive any affection from him is through her success in school, beginning in kindergarten.  This, however, gives her siblings more reason to want to hate her and be mean to her.  Adeline’s step-mother also treats her and the rest of her siblings poorly, while cherishing her own children.   Adeline continues to face more and more adversity throughout her life while trying to find acceptance from her family.

This book gives a lot of insight about Chinese culture and I would highly recommend it to teach about this lifestyle.  This book is more suitable for girls, since it is about a young girl, however I think girls that do read it would enjoy it very much.  Even though the story begins when Adeline is 5 years old, I think it would still be interesting to middle school students because even at a young age the protagonist is facing issues that are relatable to an older age group.  I would recommend this to be read in sixth grade.  Because this book is an autobiography I think it would give a lot of opportunities for students to think about what the author decided was important to share with others and how she did so.  It also gives a chance for students to think about how they would write their own autobiographies. The language used is simple and there is a lot of Chinese vocab used and explained.