CHU JU’S HOUSE

Fourteen-year-old Chu Ju makes the wrenching decision to leave her peasant farm home and baby sister in post–Cultural Revolution China in order to give her parents one last chance at a pregnancy and a yearned-for son. She embarks on both a physical and self-actualizing journey. Over several years, the bright, already plucky teen finds assorted jobs, hardships, friends, acceptance, and, finally, the peace that comes with recognizing that she made the right, albeit painful, choice and forged a new life for herself. Told in very spare first-person, Chu Ju’s journey becomes one for readers as well. Here they will meet a way of life not often portrayed in stories for the young. Readers, too, will readily accept Chu Ju’s choice and be satisfied with the ending, in which she finds true love and inherits the titular house from a woman who loved her as her own daughter. Well-done and convincing. (glossary) (Fiction. 10-13)