Intriguing tale based on a real time in China's history. Chilling. ( )

Oh my. I cried a ton at this. Wrenching and uplifting, with spare and beautiful illustrations. ( )

This story takes place in China in 1958. Chairman Mao Tse-Tung declared a war on Sparrows. He blamed the sparrows for eating their wheat crop. He planned for the people to make noise in their villages to scare the sparrows. A little girl named, Ming Li saw that this was causing the sparrows to die because they were so frightening. The rising action in this story would be when she decided that her brother and her were going to save a few birds. The climax is when the farmers realized they needed the sparrows, because their crops were dying due to the locusts. The sparrows would eat the insects, and they realized they made a horrible decision. Ming Li shows them that she saved seven sparrows and they were so happy. The all agreed to never harm the sparrows again! Loved this story, it was very cute! It also brought a tear to my eyes, you can feel that Ming Li was very upset that the sparrows were dying. She was determined to save some and become a true farmer. At the end she accomplished her goals! ( )

It is a good book because it focuses on the relationship between human beings and the environment or other animals and points out that it is important for people to obey the natural rules rather than be rebellious and fierce. ( )

This is a good example for the historical fiction because at the end of story, the author writes the exact time and fact of the sparrow war in 1958.
At the beginning, all farmers thought "sparrows are their enemies." They killed lot of birds. Ming-Li rescued some birds and hided them. Later, they found it was sparrow eat insects. Sparrows help farmers and girl is a true farmer.
It is not a easy book to read because it includes a lot of historical elements which we are not familiar with. The book has a lot of word to read. I suggest to assign this book as reading homework.
middle ( )