Rating: 
Summary: Should be required reading in Chinese history courses!!!
Review: It's geared for junior high/high schoolers, but it's great for adults who can't delve into a long study on the C. Rev., but want more than a shallow overview. It's plenty meaty to satisfy intellectuals, but it's a quick read. It gives amazing insight into the C. R., depicting clearly why people followed Mao, but showing the awful flaws. Although it's a story about a girl's life, it uses vocab/dates/hist. facts to make it an extremely useful study.
And I'm a teacher: This book in a two-week unit will give your students more long-term knowledge (regardless of effort) about Chinese hist. than any textbook could! What a book! It should be required reading in Chinese history courses!!!
Now I'm reading "Wild Swans: 3 Daughters of China" (for adults). Ch. History (1909-78)...Such a terrific book for Ch. history study!!!
Rating:
Summary: Mao's Reign Exposed Through a Child's Eyes
Review: Having spent several years of my childhood in Hong Kong, I've had an ongoing interest in Chinese culture and history. When I read this book, I felt that this was a book I wanted to share with everyone. Red Scarf Girl gives us a window into the life of a girl growing up during the Cultural Revolution - a time of great upheaval in China. Having read "Life and Death in Shanghai," by Nien Ching, several years earlier, I had already been given an excellent perspective of what it must have been like to live through this period as an adult. Now, I was fascinated to see the years of the revolution detailed through the eyes of a young girl who was trying not just to survive, but to rationalise, accept, and believe in what she saw happening around her. This is a very moving account and I believe that anyone could benefit from reading it unless they are determined not to let that happen.
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