"I hesitated to read this novel by Anchee Min when I saw that it was labeled "Young Adult", but I decided that it might be a book I could recommend to my granddaughter! It's a horrifying picture of life in Communist China as experienced by a teenaged girl named Maple. Maple is shunned and abused because her parents were teachers and thus from a "non-labor" background. She encounters a new friend, Wild Ginger, who is even less acceptable because her father was French. For me the book's power lies in its description of the incredible brainwashing that was omnipresent in Communist China under Mao. Teens might find the triangle between Maple, Wild Ginger, and a young Red Guard named Evergreen more interesting than I did. American readers of all ages will surely feel grateful that we have not experienced the tribulations that the Chinese people endured during this period of their history. "(SR2007)