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Chinese Cinderella Adeline Yen Mah Hardcover | Delacorte Books for Young Readers | 0-385-32707-2 | September 1999 | $16.95 | Ages 12 and up

Everyone remembers the story of Cinderella.   You know, the wicked stepmother treating her unfairly, the evil stepsisters who try everything to get her into trouble…   But it's just a story, right?   Pure fiction.   It couldn't happen in today's world—or could it?

Since Adeline's mother died giving birth to her, it wasn't long before her four older siblings began to blame her for their mother's death, never passing up the opportunity to remind her that if she hadn't been born, they'd all have a mother right now.   Her father, realizing that his kids needed a mother, remarried about a year after his wife's death to an aristocratic half-Chinese, half-French woman.   Niang was always impeccably groomed, adorning herself with diamonds, pearls, and expensive perfumes, as if to prove to the world that possessing material items made a person more valuable.   It wasn't long after their marriage, that her father and Niang had two children of their own—children who in Niang's eyes were “perfect.”

Extremely intelligent and eager to learn, Adeline is continually belittled for excelling in the one area of her life that offers her escape from her wretched existence—school.   Her eventual triumph over the vicious treatment she receives from her stepmother, step-siblings, and even her own brothers and sisters, is enough to give anyone hope who has ever been mistreated or abused in a blended family.

COPYRIGHT

Prepared by Brenda Day, Library Media Specialist, Crowley Middle School, Crowley, TX

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