My Name Is Number 4

November 1, 2008
Gr 8 Up-This compelling memoir, an abridgment of "A Leaf in the Bitter Wind" (Anchor, 1998), describes the brutality that many people faced during the Chinese Cultural Revolution. Ting-xing Ye, called Ah-Si because she was the fourth child in her family, was born in 1952. Her father was the prosperous owner of a Shanghai factory, which was confiscated by the government in 1959. The authorities promised compensation, but when he demanded that it actually be paid, he was forced to do menial work in the factory. Paralyzed by a fall, he died three years later. Ah-Si's mother suffered a painful death soon after. Their children were labeled capitalists and landlords, automatically signaling trouble for them. When Ah-Si was 16, she was sent to a prison farm near the Yellow Sea, where she survived for six years. Eventually, people left the countryside, and Ah-Si passed the entrance exam for Beijing University, the only person in the prison camp to do so. This book includes a bit of insight into the infighting that was going on in China between the forces backing Mao and those backing Lin Biao, his second in command. Nothing is pretty about Ah-Si's description of the life she led, but she did what she was asked and survived because of the strength of her character and her resilience. This book joins such titles such as Da Chen's "Colors of the Mountain" (Random, 2000) and Moying Li's "Snow Falling in Spring" (Farrar, 2008) to give teens a realistic picture of the way the terror of the Cultural Revolution played out in many people's lives."Barbara Scotto, Children's Literature New England, Brookline, MA"

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