Author: Grace Lin
Publisher: Listening Library
Rating: WORTHY!
Read charmingly by Janet Song.
Today is Grace Lin day on my blog! This is the companion novel to one I reviewed recently , and was published first. If you've read one, you'll recognize some of the references in the other. As I inadvertently proved, they don't have to be read in order. I really liked this one, perhaps better than the second volume. When I say "read" I mean "listened to" since I had the audio book version. It was charmingly read by Janet Song.
Min-li is a young girl who lives in poverty with her mom and dad, referred to only as Ma and Ba. Ba is in the habit of relating stories, which Ma hates. The only "wealth" the family appears to have is Minli's two copper coins kept in a rice bowl which has a rabbit design in the pottery.
Minli's world is colored and fruitless - literally. Her Village is known as the Fruitless Mountain village because nothing grows there, and few animals live there other than some desultory fish in the river. The whole area is a grey and brown mud and dust zone, which is all the color they have.
One day Minli decides to buy a goldfish from a traveling vendor, but even this is considered a waste by ma, because all it does is eat their precious rice. Minli eventually kow-tows to pressure frees it in the nearby river, whereupon the fish tells her a story which precipitates Minli leaving home and embarking upon a quest to find the Old Man in the Moon. Her plan is to ask him how she can change her fortune.
During her journey she meets - or at least learns of - the Buffalo Boy, the Green Tiger, the black tiger, dragons, a king, the twins, Da-Fu and A-Fu, and the very rabbit that was depicted on her rice bowl.
This story in engaging, and in parts hilarious, and I recommend it.
