Chinese Cinderella and the Secret Dragon Society by Adeline Yen Mah (2005)

I love coming across good reads randomly. I had to show someone how to use MeLCat, the Michigan wide interlibrary loan system and was looking for these Chinese Cinderella books, so I had to "submit" to see if the system was working properly. I decided to go ahead and read this young adult book and found I learned something new. I know nothing about the situation in China during World War II, actually I've never understood much about the Japanese - Chinese relationship. This is another good example of historical fiction, where children are the heroes during an important historic event. CC (Chinese Cinderella) is a Chinese girl in Shanghai that is thrown out of her house after a fight with her stepmother and finds shelter in a martial arts academy. Along with three boys of mixed races they participate in the rescue of American airmen, whose plane crashed after bombing Japan in 1942. I somehow had missed that the coast of China was invaded by Japan, though they mostly left the European settlements alone. I liked that the author gave a few pages of history after the story, and included a glossary of Chinese words and sayings, and an overview of the Chinese year. I also liked that she had included documents in the story - real letters written home by the soldiers that were executed by the Japanese. One more book for my ethnic - American young adult book list.