High

The Genius of China contains an abundance of information with beautiful pictures and illustrations. It is nicely broken up into 11 different subsections to quickly and easily find relevant inventions and discoveries. There is also a chart in the back of the book to show how long it took for the West to recognize and adopt Chinese inventions, with some of them never being adopted. 

There are many ways to tie this information into a science curriculum. For example, the First Law of Motion was initially discovered by a Mohist philosopher, which is an important point when talking about how scientific laws and theories have come about. Students need to understand that scientists don’t exist in a vacuum and rely on the work of people prior to them.

Passages from this may be good for high school students, but I would not recommend passages for middle schoolers. Besides passages though, this book is good as a resource to incorporate more history behind who invented the things we use everyday as well as how they came to be

The Emperor’s Riddle by Kat Zhang

Aladdin:  Am imprint of Simon & Schuster Children’s Publishing Division

First Edition Hardcover, May 2017, 235 pages, $16.99 U.S.

Eleven-year-old Mia Chen along with her older brother Jake and their mother have traveled from the United States to visit family in China.  Mia, while not happy leaving her friends behind for a month, is at least appeased by the thought that she would be able to spend quality time with her beloved Aunt Lin.  However, within a day of the visit beginning, a man from Aunt Lin’s past appears.  He reminds Aunt Lin of how in their teen years they were send to the countryside to work in the fields and to amuse themselves, they tried to solve the ancient riddles that would lead to the missing treasure of a past emperor.  The next morning, Mia awakens to her Aunt Lin gone and only a cryptic note left behind saying she would return in a few days.

Mia does not believe the note was written by her aunt, and she enlists her brother into helping her solve the riddles in the belief they will lead not only to the treasure, but also her aunt. 

The Emperor’s Riddle is a fun mystery middle grade read, but the unique setting and the author’s ability to weave a mystery novel around a historical figure works well enough to be interesting for most any age.  The author’s ability to use seemingly Chinese-inspired phraseology and use real sites in China are decided pluses, too.  One downfall is how the author glosses over some of the atrocities wrought by the cultural revolution of the People’s Republic of China.  Then, again, the fact that the true history is even alluded to, makes the book good for a literature and/or social studies teacher’s classroom library.   

Onward Towards Our Noble Deaths by Shigeru Mizuki is a resource most appropriate for older high school students. The manga is a semiautobiographical account of Mizuki's World War II service in New Guinea. Teachers should be aware of content that might not be appropriate for younger or less mature students. The manga does include mature themes and scenes including violence, suicide, partial nudity, and prostitution. Teachers should be aware of this before assigning the manga. Given this, however, a teacher could choose to use short excerpts.

Onward Towards Our Noble Deaths is an anti-war piece that could easily, in an ELA class, accompany All Quiet on the Western Front and, with elements of irony and futility of war, is a good partner for Catch-22. In a Social Studies classroom, excerpts from OTOND would provide excellent contrast to Western depictions of WWII-era Japan. Western portrayals focus on kamikaze attacks, blind loyalty to the emperor, and, decades after the war, still lack humanization of the Japanese people. OTOTND breaks down those stereotypes and brings a common humanity to the protagonists. The soldiers in OTOND aimlessly wander the jungle, suffer from malaria and ringworm, are attacked several times by enemy forces, officers are killed, soldiers are killed, and yet the protagonists continue to push towards a questionably "noble" end without surrender. Mizuki's work captures the futility of war and directs readers to question the "nobility" of any death. Characters are stuck with their officers' direction to push forward despite all obstacles while the doctor struggles to maintain the group's sense of humanity and reality. The doctor remarks that no humans should be subject to the troops' current condition. When the doctor dies, one soldier comments symbolize the complete loss of humanity: "We needed him." OTOND ends with a powerful, realistic illustrations of human bones and bodies in the jungle of New Guinea. How "noble" can death be if all deaths are all ultimately bones and dust?

I really enjoyed reading Onward Towards Our Noble Deaths and plan to use excerpts in my classroom soon.

The Waiting by Keum Suk Gendry-Kim is a beautifully drawn graphic novel that tells the story of a young woman who accidentally ends up on the opposite side of the 39th parallel from her husband and young son. What I found most striking was not the extremely painful account of Song Gwija's panic and desperation as she realizes that she has lost her family forever, but the way the book shows the lingering aftereffects of this trauma. The Waiting moves between the present day, as Song Gwija's daughter grapples with her now-elderly mother's past, and the Korean War, as Song Gwija fights for her safety and dignity. Keum Suk Gendry-Kim makes clear that Song Gwija is far from the only woman grappling with this immense loss-- her close friend has lost a sister across the DMZ. Eventually she marries a man who lost his wife, and they agree that if their respective spouses are ever found, they will amicably separate.

So much of Song Gwija's actions after the war, especially as a mother, are difficult to understand for her children. She favors her second husband's son, who is the same age as her own lost little boy, and hoards socks and underwear. She hopes to one day see her child again, and wonders if she will recognize him after decades. 

I think this book could be an incredible resource not only for teaching Korean history and culture, but incorporating SEL into the classroom. We meet Song Gwija as a eccentric old woman who frustrates her daughter, and, as we learn her story, are eventually overwhelmed with the heroism she displayed just staying alive. Though she does build a life for herself in South Korea, it is clear that her trauma is always present. She does not "overcome" what happened to her but learns to live with it, never giving up hope that she will see her loved ones again. What a great way to help students understand trauma and build empathy for others!

I plan to use this as a option for sophomores to use for a research project. It works especially well for this assignment because it ends with a class to action-- SO many Koreans are in the same position as Song Gwija and unfortunately, this population is elderly and cannot afford to waste any time if they are to reunite with their loved ones. I think this would be a great jumping off point for students to think about solutions: Why can't Song Gwija see her husband and son again? Especially decades later? What would be have to be put into place to facilitate a reunion? These questions will, I hope, lead to rich analysis.

Fifteen-year-old Yuki is struggling at school with her confidence and goes to Japan to stay with her grandfather, a well-known manga artist with whom she is very close. But during her visit, a calamitous event occurs - the East Coast Earthquake and Tsunami - and her beloved Grandpa does not survive.

Sedgwick has crafted a multimedia masterpiece. From the beginning of the book, we follow Yuki on a journey to see her beloved grandfather. It is so easy to see the love that she has for his quirky, intelligent, and caring comments. His passion and talent for the art of manga creation is shared with Yuki, and just as they start to unpack her, very relatable, emotional baggage disaster strikes. Her grandfather stays with her through the earthquake and gets her to “Little Mountain” and gives her instructions on how to stay safe before he shockingly heads down the mountain to do “one last thing.” 

The reader stays with Yuki. Waiting, feeling her nerves, and hoping beyond hope that Grandpa makes it safely back to the mountain. Yuki, feeling desperate, goes down the mountain to find him and unfortunately gets pulled into the wave. Waking up after the wave, unsure of whether or not she is alive or dead leads to a walk through destruction. She tries to recognize the life that she has been living moments before the quake. Worst of all, she can’t find her grandfather. 

The story continues over the next year of Yuki’s life and Yuki’s journey to peace. She is desperate to find a way to calm her anxiety over the disaster, to find out what actually happened to her grandfather, and to find a way to live after experiencing something that few can say they survived. She searches for healing in art, her friend, and ultimately a trip to the disaster site. 

I hope that you choose to read this raw, relatable, and warm story. The characters welcome you in and the journey compels you to stay along for the entire story. Enjoy.

Of Anchee Min's novels, I think this is her best written.  It makes extraordinary use of two competing voices to tell the story of Madame Mao: an omniscient third-person historian and a severely flawed first-person narrator who already knows her own future.  Rarely do books explore the Mao years through the perspective of the women in 'power' and hardly ever in the English canon do we get a glimpse of Mao as a human being with human being flaws.

The prose is clipped and cutting and deep.  The story can be read and analyzed from a multitude of perspectives, as a work of literature, as a starting point for historical research, as a script, as a polemic, and much more.  I would recommend reading it for the pleasure of a good read, for the purpose of infusing it into the classroom, and/or to gain some cursory historical knowledge of the (Madame) Mao Years.

Due to some of the more mature material, this would do best if used in the older levels.

This novel offers a glimpse into the interwoven, highly complex guanxi (relations) among the Chinese, more specifically among the Chinese royals of the Late Qing dynasty.  When making decisions or taking actions, the characters must consider the repercussions across entire networks of relations as well as vast lengths of time: for the Western reader, this is perhaps the most foreign aspect of the book--and therefore richest opportunity for learning about Chinese culture.  

Rich in imagery, sweeping in scope, this could be tough to use in regular high school classes, but for AP levels it would work well as a companion to explorations of the Manchus and the Qing Dynasty.  It is not Anchee Min's best book in terms of originality of craft (I think that honor belongs to Becoming Madame Mao); however, it is worth the read at the very least as engaging background information on the late Qing dynasty and Chinese social relations.