A review by katyjean81
Chengli and the Silk Road Caravan by Hildi Kang
3.0
"He did, however, like to watch the foreigners. They talked with words strange to the ear and ate foods strange in taste and smell. Chengli loved this part of the city, the Western market, and always slowed the cart to look at the silver and gold jewelry, the woven straw baskets filled with dried fish and a smell so strong it made Chengli's nose crinkle long before he even got near them. He listened to women bargaining to get the cheapest price, and he watched the seller of herbs mix medicines with strange sounding names, and he stopped to gaze at the piles of vegetables he knew and those he feared even to touch. But today the sights and sounds made him feel restless."
This description of Chengli comes about 5% of the way into the story, and it made me feel like I had something in common with this thirteen year-old boy in 630 AD China. Like Chengli, I have spent most of my life happy enough where I am, but yearning to go somewhere new, see something different, meet someone unusual. Like Chengli, I love a market full of people I don't know or understand with customs that sometimes make my nose crinkle. I wasn't immediately sucked into this book, but this quote made me pay attention and want to know where Chengli would go and what he would do.
Hildi Kang's tale of a young boy on a caravan on the Silk Road is an excellent introduction to the Silk Road, to adventure and to historical fiction for upper elementary or early middle grades readers. What was occasionally overly simplistic for me will be "just right" for my 9, 10 and 11 year olds. It's fascinating to imagine this point in history, particularly from the perspective of an early teenager, an orphan, someone with no standing in his society.
There were a lot of things I liked about this novel. I enjoyed the perspective I was given of life in 630 AD China; I liked the journey Chengli gets to travel from being an underappreciated to orphan to a heroic young man. I liked the suspense Kang built as Chengli's met the worst possible fate, the responsible adults fled and Chengli was the only hope. At times I felt that Kang tried to hard to interject historical information and her characters spoke in a manner which didn't match their age or societal standing. The beginning could have sucked me in more quickly, but after I pushed through a bit I couldn't put it down. In the end, however, this book made me long to explore the Silk Road, to visit China, and to live in times gone by. That's a pretty good endorsement. While I wouldn't add this to my favorites list as an independent reader, as a librarian this will be making my order list for next year. It will be an excellent text to recommend to students interested in historical fiction or adventure, and it would be an excellent complement to a humanities class.
This book was courtesy of Tanglewood Press (a favorite publisher of mine!) through NetGalley.
This description of Chengli comes about 5% of the way into the story, and it made me feel like I had something in common with this thirteen year-old boy in 630 AD China. Like Chengli, I have spent most of my life happy enough where I am, but yearning to go somewhere new, see something different, meet someone unusual. Like Chengli, I love a market full of people I don't know or understand with customs that sometimes make my nose crinkle. I wasn't immediately sucked into this book, but this quote made me pay attention and want to know where Chengli would go and what he would do.
Hildi Kang's tale of a young boy on a caravan on the Silk Road is an excellent introduction to the Silk Road, to adventure and to historical fiction for upper elementary or early middle grades readers. What was occasionally overly simplistic for me will be "just right" for my 9, 10 and 11 year olds. It's fascinating to imagine this point in history, particularly from the perspective of an early teenager, an orphan, someone with no standing in his society.
There were a lot of things I liked about this novel. I enjoyed the perspective I was given of life in 630 AD China; I liked the journey Chengli gets to travel from being an underappreciated to orphan to a heroic young man. I liked the suspense Kang built as Chengli's met the worst possible fate, the responsible adults fled and Chengli was the only hope. At times I felt that Kang tried to hard to interject historical information and her characters spoke in a manner which didn't match their age or societal standing. The beginning could have sucked me in more quickly, but after I pushed through a bit I couldn't put it down. In the end, however, this book made me long to explore the Silk Road, to visit China, and to live in times gone by. That's a pretty good endorsement. While I wouldn't add this to my favorites list as an independent reader, as a librarian this will be making my order list for next year. It will be an excellent text to recommend to students interested in historical fiction or adventure, and it would be an excellent complement to a humanities class.
This book was courtesy of Tanglewood Press (a favorite publisher of mine!) through NetGalley.