Paperback

Published: 14th September 2010
For Ages: 12+ years old

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A riveting memoir of a girl's painful coming-of-age in a wealthy Chinese family during the 1940s.

A Chinese proverb says, "Falling leaves return to their roots." In Chinese Cinderella, Adeline Yen Mah returns to her roots to tell the story of her painful childhood and her ultimate triumph and courage in the face of despair. Adeline's affluent, powerful family considers her bad luck after her mother dies giving birth to her.

Life does not get any easier when her father remarries. She and her siblings are subjected to the disdain of her stepmother, while her stepbrother and stepsister are spoiled. Although Adeline wins prizes at school, they are not enough to compensate for what she really yearns for, the love and understanding of her family.

Following the success of the critically acclaimed adult bestseller Falling Leaves, this memoir is a moving telling of the classic Cinderella story, with Adeline Yen Mah providing her own courageous voice.

About the Author

Adeline Yen Mah lives in California after growing up in Tianjin and Shanghai, in China, Hong Kong and England. She studied medicine but gave up her career as a physician to become a full-time writer. After the death of her stepmother, she felt compelled to write her story and the result, FALLING LEAVES, has become an international best-seller.

Publishers Weekly
Mah revisits the territory she covered in her adult bestseller, Falling Leaves, for this painful and poignant memoir aimed at younger readers. Blamed for the loss of her mother, who died shortly after giving birth to her, Mah is an outcast in her own family. When her father remarries and moves the family to Shanghai to evade the Japanese during WWII, Mah and her siblings are relegated to second-class status by their stepmother. They are given attic rooms in their big Shanghai home, they have nothing to wear but school uniforms, and they subsist on a bare-bones diet while their stepmother's children dine sumptuously. Mah finds escape from this emotionally barren landscape at school, but the academic awards she wins only enrage her jealous siblings and stepmother, and she is eventually torn from her aunt--her one champion--and shipped off to boarding school. That Mah eventually soars above her circumstances is proof of her strength of character. The author recreates moments of cruelty and victory so convincingly that readers will feel almost as if they're in the room with her. She never veers from a child's sensibility; the child in these pages rarely judges the actions of those around her, she's simply bent on surviving. Mah easily weaves details of her family's life alongside the traditions of China (e.g., her grandmother's bound feet) and the changes throughout the war years and subsequent Communist takeover. This memoir is hard to put down. Ages 12-up. (Sept.) Copyright 1999 Cahners Business Information.

Other Reviews
"This memoir is hard to put down." -- "Publishers Weekly", Starred


"From the Paperback edition."

ISBN: 9780385740074
ISBN-10: 0385740077
Audience: Children
For Ages: 12+ years old
For Grades: 3 - 7
Format: Paperback
Language: English
Number Of Pages: 205
Published: 14th September 2010
Dimensions (cm): 20.4 x 14.0  x 1.3
Weight (kg): 0.186