Available:*
Library | Call Number | Status |
|---|---|---|
Searching... Monmouth Public Library | MCCULLY | Searching... Unknown |
Searching... Silver Falls Library | JP MCCULLY | Searching... Unknown |
Bound With These Titles
On Order
Summary
Summary
From the Caldecott Medal-winning author/illustrator of "Mirette on the Highwire" comes this dramatic, multi-layered story of two legendary women warriors, Wu Mei, the "beautiful warrior", and her most famous pupil, Mingyi. Full color.
Author Notes
Emily Arnold McCully was born in Galesburg, Illinois on July 1, 1939. She graduated from Pembroke College, now a part of Brown University, in 1961 and received an M.A. in art history from Columbia University.
After graduation, she held a variety of jobs in the art field that included being a commercial artist, a designer of paperback covers, and illustrating advertisements. When one of her illustrations was seen on an advertisement in the subway, she was asked to illustrate Greg Panetta's Sea Beach Express. She accepted that offer and went on to illustrate over 100 children's books. In 1969, she illustrated Meindert de Jong's Journey from the Peppermint Express, which was the first children's book to receive the National Book Award.
Her first solo venture, Picnic, won the Christopher Award in 1985. Mirette on the High Wire won the Caldecott Medal in 1993. Her other children's books include Amazing Felix, Crossing the New Bridge, Grandmas at the Lake, My Real Family, and The Pirate Queen.
(Bowker Author Biography)
Reviews (4)
School Library Journal Review
K-Gr 5The story of two legendary female kung fu masters who may have lived in the last part of the 17th century. The first, Wu Mei, born to an aristocratic family, was educated like a boy and excelled at martial arts. Made homeless by the overthrow of the last Ming emperor (1644), the young woman finds her way to the Shaolin Monastery, made famous in television and movies. She convinces the monks to continue her training and becomes a nun and renowned teacher of kung fu. After she rescues the scatterbrained daughter of a bean-curd seller from thieves, the girl begs for her help in escaping a forced marriage to a local thug. Wu Mei advises Mingyi to postpone the wedding for a year, promising the odious would-be groom that she will marry him only if he can best her at kung fu. The year is long enough for a crash course, focusing on the development and use of qi, or vital energy. As she studies, Mingyi develops into a calm, sturdy young woman who gains her freedom. McCully steeped herself in Chinese painting, but develops her own fresh interpretation of classic Chinese art. She alternates a format of using succeeding frames with double-page spreads that evoke the sweep of Chinese scroll paintings. The last scenes, depicting the climactic fight, show that the result of Mingyi's self-mastery is not lost on the young girls of the village. Celebrating discipline and inner strength while retelling legends connected with styles of kung fu, this story authentically re-creates a period of Chinese history and gives readers not one but two lively heroines.Margaret A. Chang, North Adams State College, MA (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Publisher's Weekly Review
In this compelling picture book, Caldecott Medalist McCully explores the legend of a female kung fu master in 17th-century China. Young Wu Mei is a spirited girl, born into the Forbidden City, whose father refuses to have her feet bound or "pursue idle pastimes" like other girls. Instead she studies with tutors and learns kung fu with the boys. When an invasion separates her from her family, she decides to pursue her talents at a monastery, and becomes a Buddhist nun. Wu Mei later uses her wisdom and kung fu skills to instruct a young girl who wishes to escape an arranged marriage and to pursue a life of kung fu study. The two are credited with developing the kung fu styles still in practice today. McCully mines a historical period little known to young readers to create a vivid and vibrant tale, and carefully lays the groundwork for the moment that the lives of Wu Mei and her pupil Mingyi eventually dovetail. Along the way, readers are introduced to some of the old Chinese social customs and the spiritual tenets of Buddhism, and they will likely marvel at the bold and unusual female role models. McCully renders watercolors in panel vignettes and double-page spreads to skillfully stage plenty of martial arts action and to depict the striking details of a pristine Chinese monastery, a tattered village and a lush countryside. Her predominant browns and greens are occasionally emboldened by the flash of red or blue as the kung fu masters leap into a scene. An author's note may send kids scrambling for Bruce Lee movies and martial arts lessons as an extension of this fascinating introduction to an unlikely martial artist. Ages 4-8. (Mar.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Kirkus Review
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. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Booklist Review
Ages 5^-9. 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. --Hazel Rochman