Title: Mei Li
Author: Thomas Handforth
Genre: Children’s Picture Book
Age group: Elementary
Rating: 3 stars
Although this book is a Caldecott winner, I found it to be slightly controversial in both its images and text. Lines such as “Mei Li knew a girl could not be an actress” could very well send the wrong message to young readers. In addition, after spending the majority of the book trying to prove to her brother that girls can do everything that boys can do, she ends up cleaning the house on the last page- a stereotypical role of a female. For these reasons, I might not choose to read this aloud to a younger crowd, or at least without giving a disclaimer first.
The images are black and white, which for me personally would not be to striking and interesting as a young child, but their sketchy textured markings are unique and interesting to the eye. The illustrations do a good job of putting an image to the text, and giving more context clues than are given in the words alone.
This book would be good to implement in a lesson regarding China. The storyline is about a girl living within a walled community close to the Great Wall of China, and has a lot of vocabulary typical to China. For this reason, it could be a good text to read aloud during a cultural unit or to go along with an activity about other cultures, specifically China.
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