Wild Swans : Three Daughters of China

Amazon.com

In Wild Swans Jung Chang recounts the evocative, unsettling, and insistently gripping story of how three generations of women in her family fared in the political maelstrom of China during the 20th century. Chang's grandmother was a warlord's concubine. Her gently raised mother struggled with hardships in the early days of Mao's revolution and rose, like her husband, to a prominent position in the Communist Party before being denounced during the Cultural Revolution. Chang herself marched, worked, and breathed for Mao until doubt crept in over the excesses of his policies and purges. Born just a few decades apart, their lives overlap with the end of the warlords' regime and overthrow of the Japanese occupation, violent struggles between the Kuomintang and the Communists to carve up China, and, most poignant for the author, the vicious cycle of purges orchestrated by Chairman Mao that discredited and crushed millions of people, including her parents.

Book Description

Blending the intimacy of memoir and the panoramic sweep of eyewitness history, Wild Swans has become a bestselling classic in thirty languages, with more than ten million copies sold. The story of three generations in twentieth-century China, it is an engrossing record of Mao's impact on China, an unusual window on the female experience in the modern world, and an inspiring tale of courage and love.

Jung Chang describes the life of her grandmother, a warlord's concubine; her mother's struggles as a young idealistic Communist; and her parents' experience as members of the Communist elite and their ordeal during the Cultural Revolution. Chang was a Red Guard briefly at the age of fourteen, then worked as a peasant, a "barefoot doctor," a steelworker, and an electrician. As the story of each generation unfolds, Chang captures in gripping, moving -- and ultimately uplifting -- detail the cycles of violent drama visited on her own family and millions of others caught in the whirlwind of history.

Customer Reviews:

Entertaining and educational.......2007-10-08

I read this book in preparation for a trip to China. The book follows the lives of 3 women (daughter, mother, grandmother) in China. Chang does an outstanding job teaching the reader about China's history and politics while at the same time giving us the women's stories. You will learn a lot about China during WWII, Japanese occupation, Communist revolution, Mao's great leap forward and the cultural revolution.

On the downside, the author does not do a particularly nice job in helping the reader understand the characters. You don't get into their brains. This is a minor criticism and I still highly recommend this book if you are at all interested in learning about China in the last 100 years. You will learn a lot without having to read a boring textbook.

Amazing insight into 20th century China and Mao inparticular.......2007-09-19

It is incredible to read this true story about 20th century China. So little is really known about China to those of us in the West. It is hard to believe that so many "intellectuals" here in the West used to, and even still, have so much admiration for Mao when there is truly only evil behind this man. There is a lot of history in this book but really it is the personal story of the author and her family. A must read for us all!

Wild China.......2007-09-15

"Mrs Shau slapped my father hard. The crowd barked at him indignantly, although a few tried to hide their giggles. Then they pulled out his books and threw them into huge jute sacks they had brought with them.

"When all the bags were full, they carried them downstairs, telling my father they were going to burn them... the next day after a denunciation meetings against him. They ordered him to watch the bonfire 'to be taught a lesson.' In the meantime, they said, he must burn the rest of his collection.

"When I came home that afternoon, I found my father in the kitchen. He had lit a fire in the big cement sink, and was hurling his books into the flames.

"This was the first time in my life I had seen him weeping. It was agonized, broken, and wild, the weeping of a man who was not used to shedding tears. Every now and then, in fits of violent sobs, he stamped his feet on the floor and banged his head against the wall.

"My father had spent every spare penny on his books. They were his life. After the bonfire, I could tell that something had happened to his mind."

(Wild Swans, Jung Chang, p.439)

Me, I might've lost mine completely.

After being near-perfectly obedient to a Party whose values you put above your family, to be accused of anti-Party-ism, judged for the very tasks you were instructed to unquestioningly and unconditionally, publicly humiliated and beaten (even made to kneel on glass) and forced to burn the very items you've spent a lifetime collecting and loving...why, I would've been long-gone crazy.

But then these Chinese Communists are dedicated to their work and politics (independently of the cash factor, which wasn't much in Mao's China in the 1950s' to 60s') in a manner quite unheard of today.

I mean, how many of us believe our local politicians are in it primarily because of their "commitment to the unity, harmony and welfare of the country" (to ask is to scoff). Not for Jung Chang's dad, one of the many victims of the Cultural Revolution.

Chang is kinda like Josephus, who escaped a burning Jerusalem (whilst she a 'burning' China) to become a historical-political writer.

Josephus' authorial intentions were of course far more motivated by their allegiance to his benefactor, Vesapian. His was a history of the Jews, but also a thinly veiled exaltation of Rome. Chang's agenda, on the other hand, is an outright expose of the delusions, the cruelty, the very insanity of life and government in China from the start of the 20th century.

From foot-binding to scheming mistresses to escaping third-wives(!); from miscarriages due to long treks (because wives are discouraged to ride in their husbands' vehicles lest 'bourgeosie privilege' is suspected) to the terror of city sieges; from communal self-delusion about a glut (which was really a famine!) to hungry peasants kidnapping babies for food; from profiting from the black-market in banned books (supposedly to be burnt but conveniently set aside for secret trade, especially the erotic ones like Stendhal's Le Rouge et Le Noir) to the Little Red Book 'loyalty dance' (how? Gyrate, wave the book, sing Mao's quotes) - Chang spills everything one would want (and maybe not want) to know about life before and under Mao, structured and timelined by the lives of her grandmother, mother and her own.

The language is simple and clear and not at all 'profound', twisty or avant-garde-ish. Not unlike something you might read in an exercise book from a good Asian secondary school.

Therefore, you sorta know it's the content alone that won Wild Swans the 1992 NCR Book Award and the 1993 British Book of the Year Award. The book is proof you don't need kewl-sounding language to make a serious impact on the literary stage.

Read 'em and (you will) weep.

Wild Swans.......2007-09-01

Well written memoir that reviews the history of China immediately before, during and after the civil war between the Nationalists and the Communists, and also the early days of the Communist government. The good and the bad of Mao's rule is vividly portrayed.

Learned, laughed and cried........2007-08-31

It took me over a year to finish reading for it is a large, amazing book and I wanted to make sure that I was very alert when reading. Ms. Chang has a terrific writing style that makes you feel you are right there. Each chapter contributed to my knowledge of China as viewed through three women's eyes. It is the type of book you can finish a chapter and then go back to later for she has organized chapters to complete a period in time. Kathy Condon

Average customer rating:

Sisterhood is powerful.
really, really not worth the money
Great characters in a weak plot
awkward, but absorbing, tale of Jewish womanhood.
An Unbelievably SMART and LIVELY book

Three Daughters
Letty Cottin Pogrebin
Manufacturer: Penguin (Non-Classics)
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0142003484
Release Date: 2003-09-30

Amazon.com

The first novel by Ms. magazine cofounder and nonfiction writer Letty Cottin Pogrebin (Deborah, Golda, and Me), Three Daughters is a story of estrangement and reconciliation. Fifty-year-old Shoshanna Safer leaves her beloved planner on the roof of her car and, retracing her steps, finds only a few pages fluttering across the Henry Hudson Parkway. "The curator of her commitments"--holder of gift lists, addresses, phone numbers, appointments, credit cards, and receipts--this planner was the lynchpin of her social and professional lives. Taking its loss as symbolic, Shoshanna turns her organizational fervor to a goal that needs no date book: the reuniting of her father Samuel, a rabbi, with his eldest daughter Leah, a radical feminist with a bristly demeanor, a Mensa-level intellect, and a fondness for the F word. Similarly, she wants to heal the breach between Leah and Rachel, the suburban sister, whose adolescent sportiness gave way to an unfashionable devotion to religion and homemaking. Pogrebin has a playful way with words, and even when she lingers too lovingly on her characters' quirks, burbling on for a few extra pages here and there, the reader isn't likely to complain. Three Daughters is an auspicious fictional debut and a great gift for sisters. --Regina Marler

Book Description

The Wasserman sisters couldn't be more different-but somehow, they must find a way to come together. Shoshanna, the control freak, falls to pieces in the shadow of an impending big birthday. Leah, the brilliant English professor, crusading feminist, and passionately conflicted wife and mother, faces the prospect of losing the husband she has always taken for granted. Rachel, who has papered over her losses with an athlete's discipline and a pragmatism bordering on self-sacrifice, watches her world crumble but finds her destiny in the ruins. Confronting old wounds and forging new bonds, these three daughters of a complicated, charismatic father slowly unite as a force to be reckoned with as they struggle to break their parents' silence and understand their past.

Download Description

A bitingly funny first novel about a trio of utterly different sisters whose shifting loyalties play out within a Jewish family enmeshed in a web of well-meant secrets and lies. As the three Wasserman sisters confront old wounds and forge new bonds, the story embraces the shaping power of memory, the hunger to understand one's own past, and the tension between security and freedom. Three Daughters is a remarkably assured and effervescent fiction debut.

Customer Reviews:

Sisterhood is powerful........2004-03-10

Letty Cottin Pogrebin, the cofounder of Ms. magazine and the author of eight works of nonfiction, has written her first novel. "Three Daughters" is about half-sisters who lead complicated and multi-faceted lives. Leah is an English professor and an ardent feminist who tends to be pedantic, opinionated and overbearing. Rachel, the mother of five, is a domestic diva with a deep interest in Jewish theology. Shoshanna is a nervous type. Like Chicken Little, she is forever afraid that the sky is about to fall.

Leah, Rachel, and Shoshanna have a stormy history, and Pogrebin demonstrates that sisterhood can be a strong bond as well as a source of resentment, envy, and conflict. Pogrebin gives these three women well-defined personalities and we see how they change over time. Illuminating flashbacks shed light on how their childhoods marked them for life.

Where Pogrebin falters is in her writing style and plot development. She indulges in melodramatic and overwrought language when understatement and subtlety would have been more effective. At a little under four hundred pages, the book goes on and on; less would have been more. The author's feminist agenda takes center stage here and she pushes it so hard that it throws the narrative out of balance. A novel should develop naturally rather than serve as a forum to deliver political statements. Finally, the book is loaded with more angst than is needed in one novel. Some of the themes in "Three Daughters" are long-buried family secrets and grudges, marriages on the rocks, child abuse, mental illness, mid-life crises, and Jewish rituals.

Who will enjoy this book? Those who like to read about dysfunctional individuals who make an effort to bond after years of estrangement may find "Three Daughters" poignant and meaningful. However, since I found this novel to be more tedious than entertaining, I do not recommend it.

really, really not worth the money.......2004-03-05

I had a very hard time enjoying this book. I felt like there was little to no character development, a meandering plot, and a completely unsatisfying ending. I haven't struggled so hard to get through a book in a long time, and the only reason I didn't just give up on it was because it was the selection for my book club. It was 240 pages before anything interesting happened, and then even that plot line was poorly followed through. I am sorry, but there was almost nothing in this book that spoke to me. I am glad I got a used copy and spent only seven dollars, but even that felt like too much.

Great characters in a weak plot.......2003-07-22

This story is unusual in that the characters are more interesting than the plot. It was the three sisters, their lives, habits, and nuances that kept me reading. Leah's hardcore feminism and eclectic lifestyle was the most interesting of all. Even Rachel, the most boring of the sisters, had another, deeper side to her personality.

However, this story does have it's major flaws. First of all, I read eagerly to find out the cause of the antagonism between Leah and her father, and when I FINALLY did, I thought, "So what!" I was expecting something worth all the build up, and it definitely was a big let down. Rachel got rather annoying with all her "factoids" and there were a lot of loose ends about Leah's family at the end. I think this author is very talented at creating characters, but needs to work a little on her plotting skills.

awkward, but absorbing, tale of Jewish womanhood........2003-07-07

"Three Daughters", the first novel of accomplished feminist and non-fiction writer Letty Pogrebin, tells the story of three sisters and their families, friends, and pasts. Each of the sisters lives a life that is both exactly what she wants and a failure: each is estranged from her family, or from reality, or from her truest self. Through the course of the novel, they begin to recognize their weaknesses and, with each others' help, forge the beginnings of a better life.

It sounds like an Oprah Book Club book, and it reads like one at times. Pogrebin is obviously a novice; she tries too hard to make clever use of language and often overuses it. But she writes interesting, believable characters who live in a plausible world. The story is complex enough to be absorbing for nearly 400 pages (in a time of 200-page books, it's nice to have something to sink one's teeth into) without being confusing. And, while this book will not win any awards for depth or thematic subtlety, it's an interesting and inspiring read.

That this book is most interesting to Jewish women hardly needs saying; the sisters are Jewish and they make no secret of it. I found the book to be self-conscious about its religious emphasis at times, but Pogrebin's thorough knowledge of unusual aspects of Jewish faith and culture won me over.

An Unbelievably SMART and LIVELY book.......2003-04-25

I rarely finish a novel and then re-open to the beginning as I did with Three Daughters. Though I've read Pogrebin's non-fiction, and found them extremely memorable, this first novel of hers is entirely different.

I couldn't believe the brilliance that ran through the entire book. Nor do I understand how anyone can say that these characters were stilted, or were told but not shown. Absolutely untrue, at least for me, each one leapt to life, as did many of the issues Leah, Shoshanna and Rachel brought with them. Each woman, or daughter was absolutely three dimensional, vivid and unique. I dearly hope one doesn't have to be Jewish and/or a New Yorker to get the depth of the mind that created this work of art.

I found all the discussions of Judaic law, of Israel, of discord in a family so nuanced and was mesmerized by the tone of the entire book, which reminded me of Saul Bellow's mind, minus his self-indulgence. This book shines with a brilliance that is, as someone said below, breathtaking. How Pogrebin can make a middle aged woman racing across a busy street to save her rolodex exciting, I can't say, because I can't do it. But this first novel was dramatic, flowing and exciting from cover to cover. "Three Daughters" was for me a rare find. Alas, I am Jewish and a sometime New Yorker, so maybe it's an acquired taste. I surely hope not. Great writing speaks universal truths, and I was simply blown away by this novel, as few others do effect me. I highly recommend all readers to give this book a careful read-through. It's more than 5 stars, and as a first novel, if not a first book, kudos to the author for a wonderful, earth-shattering read. Thank you, Ms. Pogrebin!

Three Daughters of Madame Liang (Buck, Pearl S. Oriental Novels of Pearl S. Buck, 4th,)
Average customer rating:

Mother's World-Daughers World

A family divided by the Cultural Revolution

Nice intro to the Chinese perspective of the New Government

A Moving, Deeply Personal Account of the Cultural Revolution

Riveting Story; Cold War Patriotism

Three Daughters of Madame Liang (Buck, Pearl S. Oriental Novels of Pearl S. Buck, 4th,)
Pearl S. Buck
Manufacturer: Moyer Bell
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 1559210400

Book Description

After her husband takes a concubine, Madame Liang sets out on her own, starting an upscale restaurant and sending her daughters to America to be educated. At the restaurant, the leaders of the People's Republic wine and dine and Madame Liang must keep a low profile for her daughters' sake.

Soon her two eldest daughters are called back to serve the People's Republic. Her oldest daughter, Grace, now a doctor, finds meaning through her work. Things are not as easy for her daughter Mercy, a musician who is not in demand in the People's Republic, nor for her new husband who she has brought back to China with her.

Watching her two daughters grow apart and knowing that her youngest daughter will never return, Madame Liang must also face the challenges The Cultural Revolution, and how to keep herself and the restaurant, alive.

Customer Reviews:

Mother's World-Daughers World.......2007-06-11

I really enjoyed this book as Ms. Buck was able to take the reader inside a family caught in a changing world during the Chinese revolution and show how the characters each acted and reacted according to the information they had and what they believed or wanted to believe about that information. Madam Liang, who is coming to terms with disillusionment about the revolution and her past part in it, and her daughters, who had been sent to America for education and protection and their return to China with patriotic and idealistic expectations, are classic generational viewpoint studies. The shocking ending to the story was unexpected and expected all at once. The basic story is still relevant today.

A family divided by the Cultural Revolution.......2004-03-05

"The Three Daughters of Madame Liang" was Pearl S. Buck's last major novel and it holds its own with the best of her work. In Madame Liang, Buck has created a fascinating character, a woman who is very much her own person. After doing the very un-Chinese thing of leaving her husband when he takes a concubine, which he claims is his right because his wife has produced no son, Madame Liang determines to make her own way in the world and opens a gourmet restaurant that caters to the high and mighty of the People's Republic (even good Communists appreciate good food). She has not only survived, but thrived, by keeping a low profile and providing her customers with the best. But she has sent her three daughters, Grace, Mercy and Joy, to America to be educated; and now, after many years separation, Grace has been called home by her government to serve the new society.

Madame Liang has her own opinions about the new society which she has prudently kept to herself. But Grace, back home in China, throws herself into her work as a doctor and embraces everything blindly, including a young physician named Liu Pang, who parrots everything he has read in Mao's Little Red Book. Mercy, the second sister, is a musician, whose talents are not in demand in the People's Republic; but she misses her home and induces her new husband, a rocket scientist, to return to their country. For Grace, the return home is the fulfillment of herself; for Mercy and her husband, it is a disaster. Meanwhile, the third sister, Joy, a painter, having found romance and happiness with a fellow artist who has left China for good and never intends to return, remains in America to make her life with him.

Madame Liang watches the growing tension and hostility dividing the two older sisters with alarm and resignation. She can't live her daughters' lives for them; all she can do is keep on living her own life. But her own life can't survive the insanity of the Cultural Revolution; the very success of her restaurant means she's an enemy of the working classes. The Cultural Revolution sweeps everything away in its path; including Madame Liang.

Buck writes with a flow that keeps her book moving effortlessly along like an unbroken skein of thread (one gets thoroughly caught up in the narrative before realizing that there are no chapters; the book moves from one scene to the next till the final page), covering some six or seven years from the end of the 50's to 1966. Through it all, Madame Liang's continually expressed faith in her country and people suggest that, whatever her own fate, China and its people will survive in spite of themselves. Although the book is ostensibly about her three daughters, it's really the story of a remarkable woman, and through her, the story of China in transition.

Nice intro to the Chinese perspective of the New Government.......2003-05-17

I thought this novel was a wonderful introduction to the mindset of the Chinese people, both those living in China, and those living in America, towards the new government. It was an enlightening story because as an American, we view it simply as a government as one that took away everyone's freedoms, which it did. Yet, of course, it's not that simple. The story is about that deeply-rooted devotion to one's mother country, no matter what changes it goes through. It also reveals what led to the change of government, and what problems arised and what new changes occurred afterward. Through Madame Liang, representing the older revolutionary generation, the story showed how the revolution failed, and she saw how certain mistakes in history were made. Through her daughters, it showed the hope in which the younger generation had for the new China, and their attempts to restore a strong nation within the new framework. Also revealed was the the repression of emotions, through Grace, the eldest daughter, her hopeless lusting after Liu Peng, yet knowing that his mind was narrow and brainwashed in the Communist school of thought. Of course, the repression of individual thought was evident with John Sung, the scientist who refused to create weapons to be used against Americans. The stories surrounding Mercy and Joy, Madame Liang's two other daughters, was interesting in that they both struggled with their loyalties to China, but love, in Joy's case, kept her in America, while experience in the new China, forced Mercy to escape. There were a lot of interesting themes throughout the story, the theme of love in light of this new way of life, the theme of pride in one's own race and country. The style in which the story was told was very different from that of "The Good Earth." Here it was a much more fast-moving narrative, and a great modern story.

I couldn't put this book down, but there's just one thing that bothered me, and that was the ending, which seemed so abrupt. All of a sudden certain events happened which bluntly put the entire story to an end. Certainly these events were convincing, yet it still left me completely shocked and almost disappointed once the novel was finished. That's the only reason why I gave it four stars.

A Moving, Deeply Personal Account of the Cultural Revolution.......2001-08-25

I have read more than a dozen novels by the extraordinary Pearl S. Buck, and this is one of my all time favorites. Buck's lucid writing, and deep understanding of complex cultural issues makes this a gem. Set against the back-drop of the Chinese cultural Revolution, THE THREE DAUGHTERS OF MADAME LIANG charts the deeply personal journey and loss of one Chinese family. There is a sophistication to Buck's writing that is not always immediately apparent, but once you become used to her voice, the deceptively simple prose gives way to deeply moving insights. This is a glowing, powerful novel about a family and a country at a crossroads. Don't miss it!

Riveting Story; Cold War Patriotism.......2001-01-15

Pearl Buck did a masterful job of exploring the consequences of the Chinese communist revolution. Each of Madame Liang's daughters, Grace, Mercy, and Joy, come to terms with it in their own way. The essence of the book, however, is the realization that, whether a person is attracted to communism or repelled by it, his actions are usually dictated by his own personal interest. In that sense, the book is a satiric ridicule of the communist ideal.

Barbara Taylor Bradford, Three Complete Novels: Hold the Dream / To Be the Best / Act of Will

Average customer rating:

IF YOU LOVE ROMANCE YOU'LL LOVE THIS BOOK
I begged the author NOT to let the main characters die!!!

Barbara Taylor Bradford, Three Complete Novels: Hold the Dream / To Be the Best / Act of Will
Barbara Taylor Bradford
Manufacturer: Wings
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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A Woman of Substance
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ASIN: 0517084708
Release Date: 1992-10-14

Book Description

Barbara Taylor Bradford provides three engrossing, unabridged examples of the skills that have made her the mega-selling queen of the romantic page-turner.

Love In Another Town is the stirring account of a woman's attempt to forge a new life after a failed marriage and estrangement from her grown children. When Maggie Sorrell falls in love with the much younger Jake Cantrell, she begins an emotional renewal that must overcome the disapproval of others as well as the shackles of the past.

Everything To Gain tells the heart-wrenching story of a woman whose perfect life, in one tragic and violent moment, is turned into one of devastating loss and despair. Following the senseless murder of her husband and children, Mallory Keswick's life seems to have no purpose, and she considers ending it. The kindness of her late husband's mother starts Mallory on the road to discovering talent she never knew she had. The story of her recovery and salvation is told with the sensitivity and drama that the millions of Bradford fans have come to expect.

A Secret Affair adds the romantic backgrounds of the Venetian canals, the exclusive beaches of the Hamptons, and the danger-fraught cityscape of wartime Sarajevo to the story of the illicit love affair between a young artist and a famous TV newsman. The desperate measures they must take in order to be together and the gripping events that envelop their lives result in an exceptionally moving story.

Customer Reviews:

IF YOU LOVE ROMANCE YOU'LL LOVE THIS BOOK.......2000-06-25

I could not put this book down. It was excellent. She is one of the 3 authors that I have to buy their books as soon as they come out!

I begged the author NOT to let the main characters die!!!.......1997-02-09

This trilogy of a woman's life, struggles, and successes, is the best of this type I've ever read. The reader gets to know, and love her(Emma) and her longtime friend/love(Blackie). More tears than usual were shed over each one's passing. I did not want the trilogy to end

The Three Weavers Plus Companion Guide: A Father's Guide to Guarding His Daughter's Purity

Average customer rating:

Not good for so many reasons

The Three Weavers Plus Companion Guide: A Father's Guide to Guarding His Daughter's Purity
Robert Noonan
Manufacturer: Pumpkin Seed Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0970027354

Book Description

Show you how to guard and create a thriving, godly relationship with your daughter.

Customer Reviews:

Not good for so many reasons.......2006-12-17

I read and ordered this book as part of a research project on the sexual purity movement in U.S. Christianity. Aside from the obvious problems a father being responsible to protect his daughter's purity (where is the mom here? how about the daughter's ability to care for herself? what about sons?), the book has other problems. The authors frequently use the term "train your daughter". I find this problematic because your daughter is not like a dog that you "train." While I don't think the authors MEAN harm by this, I think it speaks to their understanding of a father's role as a trainer and a daughter's need to be "trained." Further, for instance, the book suggest writing a letter to your daughter about her purity and her future "prince" for her to open on her wedding day/night. Clearly, this could make for a horrible and guilt-ridden wedding day/night if your daughter has not lived up to the expectations for being completely "pure." What an awful thing to inflict on your daughter who, statistically, probably will have been sexually active before her wedding night. The problems with this book reflect the challenge of the whole sexual purity movement, and I won't go into that here. While I try to be open to the fact that some folks may decide, in consultation with parents, to not be sexually active prior to marriage, this sort of book and suggested rituals, seem to be unusually problematic and high-pressure. I would suggest that if it is important for you that your daughter (or son!) are not sexually active before they are married, you share this wish with them, explain why, and give them the information and the tools and the self-confidence to make such decisions themselves, and, if it is part of your faith, in consultation with sacred scripture and in prayer. However, almost everything in this book seems bound to make daughter (and likely father) awkward, pressured, and uncomfortable. And, ultimately, it doesn't strike me as very effective. It would like make a daugher feel as though she couldn't share her actual thoughts and experiences with her parents since, given the content of this book (if it was actually followed) would very much discourage authentic and honest communication.

Luba: Three Daughters: A Love & Rockets Book (Complete Love and Rockets, Volume 23)

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Luba: Three Daughters: A Love & Rockets Book (Complete Love and Rockets, Volume 23)
Gilbert Hernandez
Manufacturer: Fantagraphics
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 1560977698

Book Description

A brilliant character-driven graphic novel from the co-creator of Love & Rockets.

Gilbert Hernandez wowed critics in 2003 with his epic life's work, Palomar, collecting more than 20 years of groundbreaking comics that Booklist called "the most substantive single work that the comics medium has yet produced." Luba: Three Daughters is the final book in Hernandez's post-Palomar trilogy (following Luba In America and Luba: The Book of Ofelia), a body of work comparable in comics only to Hernandez's own Palomar in terms of scope and ambition. It continues the story of matriarch Luba and her extended family's travails in the United States after her Central American hometown is destroyed at the end of Palomar.

Luba: Three Daughters focuses on Luba and her two sisters, Fritz and Petra, as Hernandez continues to use his characters to explore the complex relationships that form between family and how the experiences and actions of one generation influence the next. Hernandez is renowned for his female characters. Trina Robbins, author of The Great Women Cartoonists, says "No other man in or out of the comics field understands women the way [Hernandez] does." The book spans the dramatic childhood and adulthoods of the three sisters, a past and present which includes violence and sexual drama, and explores how these events have informed their own makeup as well as their own daughters. The stories depict both the innocence of youth and the subsequent, inevitable loss of the same with equal compassion and insight.

Hernandez intersperses his main narrative with "The Kid Stuff Kids," a series of lighthearted and playful one-pagers starring the young children of the three sisters, richly juxtaposed against the complex family drama at work in Three Daughters. Hernandez's mix of Latino soap opera, magic realist touches and rich naturalism in the service of stories that speak to the changes that come with age and experience are unparalleled in comics, and feature the most vivid, memorable and honestly depicted characters in comics.

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Fast paced mystery for adventurous young girls
Fun for even the armchair adventurer!
Great fun for younger readers

Secret of the Three Treasures
Janni Lee Simner
Manufacturer: Holiday House
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

Action & Adventure | Literature | Children's Books | Subjects | Books

General | Ages 9-12 | Children's Books | Subjects | Books

General | Literature & Fiction | Teens | Subjects | Books
ASIN: 0823419142

Book Description

Tiernay Markowitz, pseudonym Tiernay West, is an adventurer. She moves with the stealth of a great cat of the African plains and can track a bicycle on dry pavement. She has no use for ballet, fancy dresses, her mother's new--and frankly very dull--boyfriend or his nerdy, computer obsessed son, Kevin. When Tiernay catches wind of possible buried treasure in her very own town, she's on the case. Little does she know where this will lead--was running for her life, scaling cliffs in the middle of the night, or getting trapped underground really part of the plan?

Customer Reviews:

Fast paced mystery for adventurous young girls.......2007-09-02

Great little young adult mystery. Especially for you curious types. The charaters are fun, the writing is well polished and the plot keeps pulling you along.

If you'ld like to find more of janni's stories, check out some of the young adult horror anthologies edited by bruce coville. ALSO, "GOTHIC! ten original dark tales" edited by deborah noyes. That anthology has a GREAT teen level horror/suspense story by Janni Lee Simner. Unfortunately it goesn't come up on the amazon search for simner.

Gothic!: Ten Original Dark Tales

Fun for even the armchair adventurer!.......2006-05-05

Tiernay West, whose business card reads: "Professional Adventurer," isn't your average girl. When she hears about a mystery in her hometown, she's on the case, even if she would rather be riding the Orient Express or searching for a crumbling scroll in the lost library of Alexandria. Because when you begin an adventure, "you have to start somewhere." Indeed. With her sidekick, allergy-ridden Kevin (the son of her mother's boyfriend), Tiernay solves the mystery her way. This is a very funny book, about a girl whose imaginative inner life swamps her real one, and her determination to live on her own terms.

Fans of the Sammy Keyes series should love this one, and I hope to see more of Tiernay's adventures in print!

Great fun for younger readers.......2006-05-05

Tiernay West is a marvelous character, overflowing with imagination, courage, and a love of adventure. Her sidekick in this adventure, Kevin, is your normal nerd-in-training, more comfortable with computers than a search for gold. Together they make a good team, cracking a mystery hundreds of years old even though the adults hardly even notice that there is a mystery. Tiernay's total faith in herself as an adventurer carries her through when anyone else would give up and go home to bed.

The best thing about this book, though, is its humor. I loved Tiernay's watch, given to her by her divorced, adventurer father. It shows the time in different cities around the world, and she's always reporting the time in Kabul or Toronto or Singapore, rather than in her home town. That's suits her just fine, because she lives more in her imagination than in the real world. The humor isn't mean; it doesn't make fun of anyone, and that's the best (and hardest) humor there is.

The great characters and humor easily carry the reader through a conclusion that is a bit pat and coincidental. All in all, though, a recommended read!

Three Plays By Brieux Member of the French Academy ( Maternity, Three Daughters of M. Dupont, Damaged Goods )

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Three Plays By Brieux Member of the French Academy ( Maternity, Three Daughters of M. Dupont, Damaged Goods )
Eugene Brieux
Manufacturer: Brentano's
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
ASIN: B000GBUYZ4

Average customer rating:

THIS BOOK IS HELLA AWESOME!!!!!!!!!
THIS BOOK IS HELLA AWESOME!!!!!!!!!
Friends
I liked the book but not Dawn
A Great book for kids and has all the emotions

Dawn, Diary Three (California Diaries)
Ann M. Martin
Manufacturer: Scholastic
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

General | Ages 4-8 | Children's Books | Subjects | Books
Similar Items:

Ducky, Diary Two (California Diaries)
Sunny, Diary Three (California Diaries # 12 )
Amalia, Diary Three (California Diaries)
Dawn: Diary Two (California Diaries)
Amalia: Diary Two (California Diaries)

ASIN: 0590023896

Customer Reviews:

THIS BOOK IS HELLA AWESOME!!!!!!!!!.......2004-11-10

THIS BOOK IS AWESOME BECAUSE I SAY ITS AWESOME!! It has an amazing plot and then exciting characters and then this book is of the wall. By reading this book you will learn many things that you young teens never knew.This book can expand youre learning disability.This book is okay because its kinda boring but it is still awesome. Preview youre review!!! ISINT THIS REVIEW SOOOO AWESOME! I JUST WANT TO SAY HI TO ALL OF MY HOMIES/ SKATERS AT MOM!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

THIS BOOK IS HELLA AWESOME!!!!!!!!!.......2004-11-10

Friends.......2004-09-07

Dawn and Sunny used to be best friends. Now they're not because Sunny's mom has cancer and is gonna die. So Sunny has had a lot of trouble and has had been hanging out with the wrong crowd. So maybe now that Sunny's mom is really sick they can become friends again. Sunny is starting to be cool with Dawn because she knows that Dawn is a really good friend to her.This is a great book.

I liked the book but not Dawn.......2003-01-28

When I read this book I was mad after reading Sunny's diaries and about how Dawn treated Sunny. I used to like Dawn but not now; she has this holier than thou attitude that is more annoying than anything. She had no business making judgments about Sunny's behavior. Dawn is a girl who thinks she's "it" (NOT!) She has no business lecturing Sunny and telling her how to live her life. Dawn is far from perfect. She thinks everyone else is wrong and she's right.

A Great book for kids and has all the emotions.......2002-08-03

This book is interestiing and is very sad. It really could explain real life decisions. Heres a summery of it. Ok so dawn and sunny has stopped talking because sunny has been very moody latley and is pushing away all her friends but its only soon that dawn relizes the situation sunnys mother is in and fell that she misses her but is till really mad at her. This bnook is great and it has much much more interesting twists but ur gonna have to read about those by youself.

Three Great Novels: Hard Times; A Tale of Two Cities; Great Expectations

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Three Great Novels: Hard Times; A Tale of Two Cities; Great Expectations
Charles Dickens
Manufacturer: Oxford University Press, USA
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

Classics | General | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books

Literary | General | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books

General | Politics | Nonfiction | Subjects | Books
ASIN: 0192823329

Book Description

These three very different novels show the remarkable scope of Dicken's work. Hard Times (1854) exposes the limites of utilitarian philosophy, as Louisa Gradgrind grows up trapped by her disciplinarian father's uncompromising views on bringing up children. A Tale of Two Cities (1859), set in London and Paris, sees the causes and effects of the French Revolution from the point of view of individuals caught up in events. One of Dicken's most experimental novels, it is also a highly charged examination of human suffering and sacrifice. Great Expectations (1860-1) charts the progress of Pip from childhood through a series of painful and comic experiences to adulthood, stressing that he must establish his own sense of self and discover his own set of values.

Peopled with memorable characters such as Sleary of the circus in Hard Times, and Miss Havisham, locked in memories of her past in Great Expectations, each of these novels explores questions of human fallibility, honour, and growth.

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