Mao and Me

The contents of the book is more subtle than the title may have suggested. There was little hint of criticism to Mao or his Great Cultural Revolution present in this beautifully made memoir.The author paid great attention to details to make this picture book an as the matter of fact type plain portrait of lives of a family living in Tianjin from early 1960s to late 1970s. References to historical events are precise and accurate, but in an indirect way through candid recordings of life changes of the author's family and neighbours.The drawings are superb thanks to a mix of traditional Chinese brush techniques and modern painting skills. Narratives are concise and to the point, in a style aligned to western comics.For children or grownups who hadn't learned much about China, this is a great visual history guide for the aforesaid time span. It takes some cultural cues to decipher author's choice of plain wordings, such as 'row of buildings built very quickly'. It could be conveniently omitted, as if what often happened when a life time Chinese resident read the word 'driveway' in an American novel.The power of this book, however, is contained underneath the extremely restrained narration. It begs for explanations from a historic observer who had seen it with naked eyes, to recognize the sadness, desperate and despite the author meticulously planted all over the book. Fortunately, I lived in the same city through roughly the same time period, and have followed a similar life path. On the other hand, some of the half buried clues are easy to detect. For example, a reader can be assured that no normal child would be indifferent having his daddy a thousand miles away in a re-education labour camp. Regardless how calm the author had demonstrated in his description of this, it serves as a reference point to the level of pain on other enduring that the child had gone through.Chinese had seen emperors come and go in its five thousand years of civilization. Before Mao, the country itself is weaved with family ethics and leaned on some very simple values, such as taking care of the elders and respect to education. Mao, armed with communist idealism, for the first time in history smashed China's old foundation to pieces when he forced spouses to turn on to each other, students beat up their teachers and declaring knowledge had zero value invested within. With that, Mao have changed Chinese forever.

I learned about this book about two years ago when my Granddaughter and I attended a reading by the Author of a different book. His other books are drawn on Chinese folk tales of his childhood. Mao and Me is an autobiographical presentation of what life was like for a young boy and his family during the Cultural Revolution in China. His excellent illustrations compliment the text as we are give a peek at the life of an ordinary family and the repercussions of the Great Leap Forward. I loved the book, as did my granddaughter.

He gives an insight to working in a place that was always constant with fear and getting sent away-its a must for everyone!!!

I work in a primary elementary school, so the title of this book kind of jumped out at me. I wondered what kind of children's picture book about Mao could be appropriate for a primary elementary school. I was intrigued further by the author, whose work on Little Eagle I really enjoyed, even as I thought Little Eagle was also a bit older for the audience of the library. Nonetheless, I read the book and found myself very confused when I was done. I went back and read it again and studied the artwork in greater depth.It's clear this book is not really in the realm of the majority of primary aged children. Death, chickens with their throats slit, burning books, angry mobs, and the Cultural Revolution under Chairman Mao are a long way from Junie B. Jones or No, David! The artwork is at times grotesque, bloody, sad, and sometimes disturbing. There are many pages with tearful characters. As some have mentioned, it's graphic novel-esque in style.Beyond all of those things, what confounds me the most is trying to figure out the author's message. Despite his honesty in telling of book burnings, fear, indoctrination, propaganda, the menacing Red Guard, food rationing, and forced re-education, he maintains an even temperament. There is no anger, no acrimony, and very little pathos in his writing. His emotional control is at once amazing as well as cold-blooded. He recounts the surge of pride when he is given his first red arm band and of being the artist in charge of illustrating the litany of Mao-isms that everyone was charged with plastering everywhere. He is sad when his father is sent off for re-education but there's a resignation, a restraint. He is downright matter-of-fact when telling of his beloved neighbor getting the Red Guard treatment; "From the window I saw Red Guards in the street dragging Mrs. Lin by her hair. They ripped her clothes, forced her to confess in public, and then made her climb into the back of a truck. I waited in front of her door for many days, hoping for her return, but I never saw her again."As I said, there are tears. The author-as-child cries for many reasons throughout the book. I wonder if his intent was to merely describe his life through the innocent eyes of the child he was. Despite all the insanity around him, he was but a young boy and only knew what a child could know. Children have arguably the strongest sense of survival. No matter how difficult their circumstances, they retain their simplicity, their joy, and their love longer than any adult would. Yet, this explanation seems too facile.Perhaps the greater power of this memoir is in emphasizing the amazing resiliency of the Chinese people. Generation upon generation have suffered in various ways and yet they forge on, understandably proud of their staggering heritage, the strength of their culture, and the fact that they have endured longer than any other civilization on the planet. Perhaps they've done this for so long because they don't dwell too long in self-pity or anger. Their pragmatism drives their durability. In the end, I obviously don't know, but I very much long to understand.While this book seems a bit too much for very young children, it has this middle aged man wrestling with a lot of issues. I certainly can't fault any book for doing that, even a child's.

This is excellent! It appears long, but the pictures are engaging and there isn't too much text on each page. I was able to read the book in one sitting with my children (ages 4-11) and they remained interested throughout the entire reading. This is the true story of a young boy who lived through the Cultural Revolution. In a matter-of-fact way, he describes his simple life and then how his father was taken to a reeducation camp. His nice neighbor was humiliated and then carried away. His grandmother's personal chickens were slaughtered. Meanwhile, as a young boy, he was happy to get to go to school and be part of the Red Guard. No judgments are included, but you can definitely infer the horror of the time period from both the events and from the gray-toned illustrations. There are few children's books written on China under Mao Zedong's leadership, but one book makes up for the lack as it covers so much. (Sparrow Girl by Sara Pennypacker is another good one.)