Hazel Rochman (Booklist, February 1, 1998 (Vol. 94, No. 11))
Like McCully's Caldecott winner, Mirette on the High Wire (1992), this extends the picture book with a tense drama about brave young women who find strength in themselves. McCully tells a kung fu story about two legendary women in seventeenth-century China. First, there is the child prodigy whose father refuses to allow her to become an idle lady with bound feet. Instead, she studies the five pillars of learning and the martial arts and becomes a Buddhist nun named Wu Mei, beautiful warrior. Then Wu Mei saves a desperate, scatterbrained young girl from a forced marriage to a hooligan bandit. The warrior nun teaches the girl to save herself with kung fu, and as the girl learns that softness and yielding can prevail over hardness and brute force, she grows strong and calm. In a great climactic fight, the small girl uses her technique to rout the bandit and send him flying. The defeat of the swaggering bully has elemental appeal, and there are great comic action scenes of the huge bandit hurtling through the air. In traditional Chinese style, the art of this large-size book includes narrow narrative panels that alternate with wide, detailed, misty landscapes in watercolor, tempera, and pastel. The pictures reinforce the story of strength that comes from mastering yourself and finding harmony with the universe. Category: For the Young. 1998, Scholastic/Arthur A. Levine, $16.95. Ages 5-9.

Uma Krishnaswami (Children's Literature)
With a name like Jingyong, 'Quiet Courage,' how could the heroine of this story possibly grow up quiet and quiescent at court? So despite her mother's worries ("Who will marry an educated woman?") it is decided that she must find her own path. Find it she does. Her path leads to the Shaolin monastery. Under the tutelage of a wise nun, the girl learns to still her mind, harness her qi, and summon strength when she needs it. In the end, she decides her own destiny. An author's note provides fascinating material on the background to kung fu. 1998, Arthur Levine/Scholastic, $16.95. Ages 7 to 10.

CCBC (Cooperative Children's Book Center Choices, 1998)
When Mingyi, a distressed peasant girl, approaches the great warrior nun Wu Mei, upset because her father has told her she must marry the bandit Soong Ling to save his business, Wu Mei decides she will try to teach the excitable girl kung fu. "Tell Soong Ling...you will marry him if he can best you at kung fu," she directs Mingyi. Wu Mei then offers Mingyi a "crash course." "It will take a year," she tells her. During that year Wu Mei teaches Mingyi how to make her mind calm, how to be like the water and follow the path of least resistance, how to bend with suppleness and force like bamboo, how to maintain balance like the stately crane. "Hadn't I better learn to fight?" asks a worried Mingyi? "You are learning," the serene Wu Mei replies. Emily Arnold McCully's original story is based on the legendary Chinese character Wu Mei. Her light-filled, graceful paintings illustrate the story, which is told in a relaxed style that incorporates contemporary English vernacular. An author's note for this story set in 17th century China provides background information on kung fu, which, the author notes, means "human effort" and is a discipline of lifelong study that goes far deeper than the martial arts image often conveyed in western popular culture. CCBC categories: Folklore, Mythology and Traditional Literature; New Editions of Old Favorites. 1998, Arthur A. Levine/Scholastic, 40 pages, $16.95. Ages 5-8.

Kirkus (Kirkus Reviews, 1998)
From McCully (Popcorn at the Palace, p. 1225, etc.), a well-wrought story of two 17th-century Chinese women that opens with the birth of a baby girl whose steady gaze inspires her father to name her Jingyong, "Quiet Courage." She is taught as a son would be, developing her qi, or vital energy, to such an extent that she wins a place as a Buddhist nun in the Shaolin Monastery, as well as a new name, Wu Mei, or "beautiful warrior." The embodiment of the notion that inner strength defeats brute force, she helps Mingyi Wang, a village bean-curd seller, avoid marriage to the leader of a gang of thugs through the teaching of kung fu. Into regular emissions of wisdom McCully blends plenty of humor, some of which is calculated to speak to youngsters (Wu Mei is happy to teach kung fu to the young men who come to the monastery, provided they "didn't just want to beat somebody up"), while some is more appealing to an adult sensibility: "Kung fu takes a lifetime to learn," Wu Mei tells Mingyi, "but this is an emergency. So I will give you a crash course. It will take a year. Postpone the wedding." Look for long and loud applause from those searching for competent heroines in unusual, yet credible, situations. 1998, Levine/Scholastic, $16.95. © 1998 Kirkus Reviews/VNU eMedia, Inc. All rights reserved.

Deborah Stevenson (The Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books, March 1998 (Vol. 51, No. 7))
You don't generally see "nun" and "kung fu" in the same sentence (and the juxtaposition in itself is going to grab kids' attention), but they're inextricable in this picture book, which tells of Wu Mei, the legendary Ming dynasty scholar who became a Buddhist nun and kung fu master. McCully's control of her unusual story is superb, and she doesn't make the mistake of ignoring the more conventionally appealing aspects in order to focus on high-minded philosophy. Wu Mei's principles are succinctly and amusingly described: she taught young men who came to study with her "if they were sincere, and didn't just want to beat somebody up." The book focuses primarily on Wu Mei's teaching of Mingyi, a young woman who seeks to avoid an arranged marriage, and it cinematically revels in their meeting: a pair of huge footpads set upon Mingyi in a deserted street as the little nun hovers on the edge of the picture; a page turn reveals the dream-fulfilling comeuppance as the demure nun unleashes her hidden powers and sends the lugs sailing through the air. Mingyi seeks to avoid marrying a brigand, and under Wu Mei's guidance she challenges him to a kung fu match in a year's time, his victory prize to be her hand in marriage. The book then describes steps of Mingyi's physical and mental training, making initially alien imagery into understandable components of a physical discipline, and leads up to her final victory over her would-be husband and her decision to follow the study of kung fu rather than to marry at all. McCully's text is simple and grounded in the real and familiar, so that qi and other concepts related to kung fu aren't impenetrably mystical despite being paradigm shifts for most youngsters. The story has verve and momentum, reading rather like one-seventh of The Magnificent Seven; kids who haven't previously contemplated martial arts will find this awakens their interest, and all will enjoy the idea of being able to trounce overconfident opponents while remaining responsible and mature. In a genre where the flashy and creatively interpretative are becoming the illustrative norm, it's easy to underestimate McCully's quieter and more literal art. Her restraint keeps the visuals from overshadowing the text, however, and more importantly from undercutting the text's emphasis on the concrete application rather than the abstract philosophy. Pastel and tempera add an appropriate oomph to the watercolors, and the figures are characterized by expression and movement rather than detailed draughtsmanship; the little nun's bald head and blue robe and Mingyi's dark hair and muted red jacket stand out as recurring motifs even amid busy crowds, and the book makes the most of the contrast between Mingyi and her hefty opponent. Design keeps things moving too: oversized horizontal pages feature varying numbers of panels, so that the freedom of the drawing is disciplined by straight framing borders and boxes of text. Historical yet energetic, this will make for a vigorous readaloud (one you may want to save until just before recess); its high-action subject and unthreatening paneled page design will also entice independent readers, and the brigand, kung-fu nun, and protagonist going up against great odds are born to be booktalked. An author's note gives historical background and states that the legend of Wu Mei may not have been based in fact-but who cares? R*--Highly recommended as a book of special distinction. Reviewed from galleys (c) Copyright 1998, The Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois. 1998, Levine/Scholastic, [40p], $16.95. Ages 7-10 yrs.

Horn Book (The Horn Book Guide, Fall 1998)
Born near the end of the Ming Dynasty, a girl grows up to become a fighting nun, renowned for her martial arts. Later, when a timid village girl asks for help in deterring her loutish husband-to-be, the nun teaches her kung fu so she can save herself. The story is intriguing, and the watercolors, more dynamic than the writing and reminiscent of old kung fu comic books, are filled with dramatic motion. Category: Fiction. 1998, Scholastic/Levine, 40pp. Ages 6 to 9. Rating: 3: Recommended, satisfactory in style, content, and/or illustration.