Review by New York Times Review
AMERICANS today are used to a particular narrative when it comes to Communist China. In the beginning, Maoist ideals provide the Chinese protagonists with comfort and hope. Eventually, though, ideals give way to suffering. My mother's family escaped from mainland China just as the Communist Party came to power. Growing up, I was steeped in this narrative through my family's stories. I opened Na Liu and Andrés Vera Martínez's "Little White Duck: A Childhood in China" expecting to encounter it once again. "Little White Duck" is a collection of eight autobiographical short stories from Liu's own childhood, illustrated as comics by Martínez. Liu grew up in China during the 1970s and '80s, then came to the United States in 1999 as a research scientist Martínez is her American-born husband. Early in the book, a young Liu, nicknamed Da Qin (Big Piano), finds her parents in their kitchen. They tell her that her grandfather has passed away. Da Qin starts to cry, but can't figure out which grandfather they're mourning. Later, her family walks past a giant mural of Chairman Mao. "Ooooh!" Da Qin says, pointing to the mural. "That grandpa." Da Qin's parents take her to a vigil for the deceased leader. "My parents would explain that sad day to me many years later," Liu writes. I thought Liu would explain "that sad day" in accordance with my family's stories: perhaps she would describe the horrors of the Cultural Revolution. Maybe Martínez would trace the ribs of a reeducation camp victim with his delicate brush. Instead, Da Qin tells her family's stories. After her mother got polio, Mao's army performed multiple surgeries free and helped her to walk again. A government scholarship enabled her father to leave behind the backbreaking life of a farmer. Her parents married and made a prosperous life for their two children, Da Qin and her younger sister, Xiao Qin (Little Piano). At this point, I almost put the book down. Reading about the virtues of Chinese Communism felt like a betrayal of my family. However, Liu's writing and Martínez's cartooning compelled me to continue. "Little White Duck" isn't Communist propaganda. It is at once more innocent and more sophisticated. What Liu and Martínez do is convey a child's-eye view of a country in transition. Politics, culture and history play into their stories, but the reader's awareness of them is a child's awareness. The mural of Mao and the ancient gods and the colorful posters encouraging patriotic behavior are probably important, but fireworks, schemes to catch rats and pretty jackets with soft little white duck-shaped patches are so much more interesting. Liu and Martínez perfectly capture that childhood exuberance, but grown-up sensibilities nonetheless underlie their storytelling. Every so often, Martínez's panels give way to propagandists images, forcing a dialogue between Da Qin's real life and the ideal life espoused by her government. MARTÍNEZ maintains a beautiful hand-drawn quality throughout, even in his lettering. This makes the occasional intrusion of blatantly digital effects all the more jarring. In a scene in which Da Qin's family prepares for a New Year celebration, the Chinese calligraphy adorning the hallway is so clearly cut-and-pasted that it undermines the book's intimacy. "Little White Duck" closes with a wrenching tale of Da Qin's trip to the countryside, where she meets her father's relatives for the first time. Her cousins marvel at the soft little white duck-shaped patch on her pretty jacket. Then they blacken it with their dirty fingers. Instead of toys, they play with bugs. Their poverty leaves Da Qin speechless. By realizing that inequality exists even in the People's Republic, Da Qin the child begins to grow into Liu the adult. Perhaps "Little White Duck" isn't so different from my family's stories after all. By the end of the book, though, I didn't really care, and that's the brilliance of what Liu and Martínez have done. Their characters are more than just pieces to be puzzled into someone else's narrative. They're living, breathing people. Gene Luen Yang is the author of "American Born Chinese" the first graphic novel to win the Printz Award for young adult literature.
Copyright (c) The New York Times Company [April 24, 2019]
Review by Booklist Review
Graphic memoirs are a cornerstone of the graphic-novel format, but rarely are they written with children as the primary audience. In eight short stories, Liu has done just that, giving younger readers a glimpse into her life growing up in China just after the death of Chairman Mao. By linking her stories to a teaching by Confucius that says one learns in three ways by studying history, by imitating others, and through one's own experience Liu shows how her parents survived the famine during China's Great Leap Forward, how the death of soldier Lei Feng influenced the behavior of Liu and her sister, and how a trip to the countryside to visit her relations helped Liu realize just how privileged her life in the city was. The stories are vivid even without Martinez's bold artwork that evokes both traditional Chinese scrolls and midcentury propaganda posters. The result is a memoir that reads like a fable, a good story with a moral that resonates.--Volin, Eva Copyright 2010 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by School Library Journal Review
Gr 4 Up-Based on her childhood experiences, Liu and her husband have created a rich, multilayered memoir, incorporating history, geography, language, culture, and mythology. Eight short stories are woven together to form an exquisite, picturesque tapestry of life in China during the 1970s. Liu introduces Chinese culture through a personal perspective that is delightful and thought-provoking. (c) Copyright 2013. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Horn Book Review
Wife-and-husband team Na Liu and Andrs Vera Martnez use a graphic-novel format to bring Lius childhood in 1970s Wuhan, China, to life for contemporary children. Much will seem the same -- family life with a younger sister, school, a visit with a semi-scary grandmother -- but the particulars in the eight vignettes included here make all the difference. Liu recalls her uncontrollable (and uncomprehending) sobbing at the death of a "grandpa" she did not really know, Chairman Mao; creativity and finally subterfuge is required when her teacher commands each student to bring in four rat tails as evidence of participation in the government campaign to rid the country of vermin. Illustrator Martnez gleefully pictures the sisters elaborate fantasies for rat-trapping (like putting a soybean up the butt of one rat, sending it into a frenzy that will cause it to kill the rest of the pack) as well as their eventual mutual admittance that they cant even touch a rat to sever the required tail ("EEEYuu! GROSS!"). Author and illustrator together give us an unvarnished and intimate account of a real childhood: plain-speaking, rough-hewn, and very much down-to-earth. While the time and place the book depicts are very different from our own, theres not a hint of sentimentality or exoticism: the scene where the mother shames the girls into cleaning their plates by telling them the real story about starving children in China is simultaneously horrifying and hilarious. A glossary, a chronology, and an authors note provide context. roger sutton (c) Copyright 2012. The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
