Gisela Jernigan, Ph.D. (Children's Literature)
When I was a very little girl in Vietnam I thought happiness was something I could always hold close." So begins this fictionalized memoir of a young Chinese girl growing up in a North Vietnamese village during the war. At first, Su Phan's life with her warm, extended family is comfortable and secure, but everything changes when the bombs start falling and her father is sent to a far off prison for seven years. When he returns, he and Su Phan have changed so much that they do not recognize each other, and she has become too old to sing the childish song that she used to sing for him when he returned from work. The author began writing this memoir at a Literacy Center to try and improve her English, and her tutor, writer Stella Pevsner, helped her turn it into a novel. 1997, Clarion, $14.00. Ages 10 up.

Kirkus (Kirkus Reviews, 1997)
Su Phan, the daughter of a prosperous rural village merchant in North Vietnam, sees her wonderful life ruined by the Communists and the war. When her father's trading boats are confiscated, he sets up a store, but the Communists destroy it and Su Phan's home, and imprison her father for years for re-education. When the village is bombed, her mother moves the remaining family into the jungle, where they build a hut and eke out a meager existence. With Pevsner (Would My Fortune Cookie Lie?, 1996, etc.), Su Phan, now called Fay Tang, tells the true story of her lost childhood and opens up an unfamiliar world, that of the North Vietnamese peasants in the years before and during the war. For US readers, it will be a compelling portrait of the life of a child for whom terrible hardship was an accepted part of reality, and it will linger in their minds. 1997, Clarion, $14.00. © 1997 Kirkus Reviews/VNU eMedia, Inc. All rights reserved.

Pat Mathews (The Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books, January 1998 (Vol. 51, No. 5))
With this novel based on coauthor Tang's childhood, we peer into the life of Su Phan, a young Chinese girl growing up in North Vietnam during the Vietnam War. Because her family is relatively wealthy, her father is eventually torn from the family and taken to a prison ("'So you think you're too good to be Communist, eh?' shouted one soldier, delivering a kick"). We follow the rest of the family's subsequent deprivation and relocation during increasingly frequent bombings by the Americans until the day her older-than-his years father returns to the family, the war ends, Su Phan marries, and she immigrates to the United States. There is plenty of raw material here for a riveting tale of trial and triumph, but nothing substantial ever materializes. Stereotypical characterizations (a crotchety grandmother, a sacrificing mother) and wooden narrative ("Before long, I will not be a child anymore, but a young woman") hamper a story that lacks emotional depth. It's still intriguing to see the Vietnam War from the other side, however, and the story's brief afterword provides some usefulness in terms of its historical setting. Ad--Additional book of acceptable quality for collections needing more material in the area. (c) Copyright 1998, The Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois. 1997, Clarion, 107p, $14.00. Grades 3-5.

Horn Book (The Horn Book Guide, 1997)
Told with straightforward simplicity, this story based on Tang's life describes the hardships that a Chinese family living in North Vietnam endure in the last decade of the Vietnam War. While the events described are heart-wrenching, the lack of character development makes the book less emotionally engaging. A note with historical background about the Vietnam War would have been helpful. Category: Fiction. 1997, Clarion, 107pp.. Ages 9 to 12. Rating: 4: Recommended, with minor flaws.