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Estado | Reservas de ítem | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Búsqueda… Central | Book | J W571G | 1 | Juvenile Fiction | Búsqueda… Desconocido | Búsqueda… No disponible |
Búsqueda… East | Book | FIC WHE | 1 | Fiction Collection | Búsqueda… Desconocido | Búsqueda… No disponible |
Búsqueda… Science | Juvenile Book | J 813.54 W571G, 1992 | 1 | Juvenile Collection | Búsqueda… Desconocido | Búsqueda… No disponible |
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Resumen
Resumen
Thirteen-year-old Mai and her family embark on a dangerous sea voyage from Vietnam to Hong Kong to escape the unpredictable and often brutal Vietnamese government.
Reseñas (5)
Reseña de Publisher's Weekly
Whelan's ( Bringing the Farmhouse Home ; Hannah ) latest novel examines the monumental struggle and privation that a group of people must endure to escape political and economic oppression in contemporary Vietnam. Thirteen-year-old Mai is frightened and distraught to learn that her parents have planned to leave their home and secure passage to Hong Kong. But with hopes of freedom and prosperity to spur them on, Mai and her relatives cram themselves onto a barely seaworthy boat captained by a crusty, greedy man. The voyage is difficult at best: food and water are scarce; illness, lice, rats and blazing sun plague the debilitated passengers. When they finally reach Hong Kong, the challenges of a police inspection and a camp filled with thousands of other refugees await them. Although it chronicles many brutal realities, Whelan's story maintains an air of cool composure. Mai is the perfect narrator through whom to introduce a large cast of unusual, sympathetic characters; her emotional control and keen observations prove to be a source of calm in the storm that swirls around her. Readers will be introduced to elements of a new culture and made painfully aware of social conditions in other parts of the world. Ages 8-12. (Aug.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Reseña de Horn Book
The plight of the Vietnamese boat people is told from the point of view of Mai, a thirteen-year-old fleeing with her family from their village in the Mekong Delta. The characters are memorable, especially Mai's grandmother, a traditional healer who finds herself traveling with a woman physician whose educated ways she distrusts. A compelling story. From HORN BOOK 1992, (c) Copyright 2010. The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Reseña de Booklist
Gr. 5-7. When Mai's family discovers that Vietnam government soldiers will soon apprehend her father and her grandmother, a healer and fortune-teller, the family slips away in the night. For the grandmother, parents, younger brother and sister, and Mai, it is a voyage of tragic dimensions. They trudge through the swamps of the Mekong Delta toward the sea, where Mai's father's skill as mechanic for an ancient boat engine is their ticket to freedom. The gut-wrenching trip to Hong Kong is just another step toward a new life, which the family eventually finds. Whelan's characters are distinctive, and her story is riveting, haunting, and memorable, reflecting the human virtues of determination, hope, love, and courage in the face of the most devastating of circumstances and injustices. (Reviewed Jan. 1, 1993)0679822631Deborah Abbott
School Library Journal Review
Gr 4-8-- Since the grandmother faces arrest in present-day Vietnam for following the old religion and practicing healing, the Vinh family decides to flee their small rice-growing village in the Mekong Delta and escape by sea to Hong Kong. With his skills as a mechanic, the father has secured their passage on a small boat. In a first-person narrative, 13-year-old Mai relates their odyssey. Before boarding the boat, the Vinhs become acquainted with a female doctor and her daughter from Ho Chi Minh City (formerly Saigon). Whelan uses this relationship to set off Vietnamese rural life against the urban, the old traditions against the new. Perhaps because of this emphasis on imparting information, the plot is not as significant as it could be, and many of the characters are stock figures. Nonetheless, the book describes well the hardships many of America's newest refugees have endured and is one of the few accounts available on Vietnam's boat people. --Diane S. Marton, Arlington Coun ty Library, VA (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Kirkus Review
The experiences of a village family, reluctantly escaping their homeland in a perilous boat trip to Hong Kong. Mai's grandmother, a traditional healer, is threatened with arrest for her ``dangerous superstitions,'' but her father is a mechanic whose skills win a place on the small, overcrowded, rickety craft. The strangers aboard become a community on the long journey, while events en route are representative: a birth; a death; a Tet celebration; the rescue of the sole survivor of another, capsized vessel. In Hong Kong, some of the less able are sent home, but Mai's family, her friend Kim, and Kim's mother (a doctor) are among the lucky ones chosen to go to America. Though the events seem selected to present a typical ordeal, Whelan narrates with eloquence and sympathy, deftly weaving in telling details like the competition between Kim's mother and Mai's grandmother. The conclusion (threatened with deportation, Kim's mother is reprieved in the nick of time) is pat, but appropriate given Whelan's choice of keeping the worst tragedies offstage. By prefacing her novel with thanks to several Vietnamese and the Women's Commission for Refugee Women and Children, Whelan implies that it's based on interviews. An effective plea for a group whose plight, as an afterword notes, continues to worsen. (Fiction. 8-12)
Tabla de contenido
| Part 1 The Village | p. 1 |
| Part 2 The Journey | p. 25 |
| Part 3 The Voyage | p. 49 |
| Part 4 The Silver City | p. 97 |