Pirate Queen: A Story of Zheng Yi Sao

Written by Helaine Becker

Illustrated by Liz Wong

Groundwood Books

978-1-77306-124-5

36 pp.

Ages 6-10

March 2020

The Pirate Queen was a woman whose impact was strong but whose details are vague, if not non-existent, and so Helaine Becker has created her story. Whether the Pirate Queen started in poverty and was captured by pirates to become a captain's wife or not, the story that Helaine Becker envisions for this extraordinary woman, born in Imperial China in the late 1700s, is one of making something from nothing, rewriting her story to one of possibilities and taking control. 

In Canton, girls like us were like ink: used and used until we were all used up.

But Fortune had shaken my bones and spun the wheel of my fate.

I had been given something rare: an opportunity.

I was ink, but I could also be the brush. 

From Pirate Queen: A Story of Zheng Yi Sao by Helaine Becker, illus. by Liz Wong

According to Helaine Becker's illustrated creative biography of the Pirate Queen, the girl refused to marry the pirate captain Zheng Yi unless he gave her an equal share in his enterprise. So, when he died six years later, she took command over more than 1800 ships and 70,000 men, never allowing any of the pirates to challenge her. Working with other squadron leaders as a council, she came to dominate the South China's seas and its economy.

From Pirate Queen: A Story of Zheng Yi Sao by Helaine Becker, illus. by Liz Wong

But the Pirate Queen did not restrict herself to the water. She also conquered poorer coastal towns until the emperor deemed it necessary to go after her. Attacks and attempts to starve her and her Red Flag Fleet were unsuccessful, as were attacks by British, Dutch and Portuguese ships.  When she finally decided to retire from the sea, she finds a way to leave free and rich while still thinking of those beneath her.

In the end, I had written my own scroll, using brine and blood as my ink.
I had never dreamed of the sea, but the sea, it seemed, had dreamed of me.

From Pirate Queen: A Story of Zheng Yi Sao by Helaine Becker, illus. by Liz Wong

Though Helaine Becker is a versatile writer of picture books, early readers, middle grade fiction, and non-fiction, I think she has outdone herself in this story of the Pirate Queen. Her author's note makes it clear that little is known about the Pirate Queen, whose name Zheng Yi Sao refers to her simply as "Wife of Zheng Yi" but Helaine Becker writes her a life story of smarts and cunning, seeing chances where others might see despair. But Helaine Becker doesn't just make up a story about Zheng Yi Sao; she gives it life with words and voice–the story is narrated by the Pirate Queen– that make the Pirate Queen real and even eloquent. I can just imagine this young woman with her meagre existence deciding to make something of her atrocious circumstances, believing she had nothing to lose. In the end, she gained much and made a life for herself and others.

If you've been reading CanLit for LittleCanadians, you'll know what a big fan I am of illustrated biographies and Pirate Queen: A Story of Zheng Yi Sao will become an auspicious addition to that genre especially with American illustrator Liz Wong's pencil on bristol board (digitally coloured) art giving the richness of colour and form to the story. It's the telling of a little known historical figure whose impact was extraordinary but seldom discussed. That's about to change. Because of Helaine Becker, the Pirate Queen has had her story told and her fierceness acknowledged for the ages.

The Finding Place

Written by Julie Hartley
Red Deer Press
978-0-889-95533-2
244 pp.
Ages 10-14
September 2015

Thirteen-year-old Kelly, the narrator of The Finding Place, knows only that she’d been found outside a village school in Yangshuo, China before she’d been taken to an orphanage from which her parents adopted her at a few months of age. Other than being Chinese by birth, Kelly knows little of her beginnings and herself.  But this was always okay with her, until her dad leaves.  Not knowing why he left, where he was, and if he was coming back, Kelly is left filling in the blanks of that story with various possibilities, all that make her mom the bad guy.  Moreover, Kelly is starting to feel lost, unaware of who she truly is.

My Canadian identity came from my parents but, with Dad gone, how much of that was left? (pg. 44)

Like a typical teen, Kelly lashes out at her mother, Auntie Lou and best friend Raziel whenever they question her about what she’s thinking or doing.  Not surprising that Mom wants to find a way to connect with Kelly, so she plans a March break trip to China, hoping that it will help Kelly clarify some things about her birth place and ultimately herself.

But Mom’s debilitating headaches often leave Kelly alone and exploring–without permission–outside the hotel.  At times, she feels Chinese, empowered by trying out her Mandarin and being understood, and participating in a Tai Chi activity in a park.  But then the confusion returns.

Back in the lobby of our hotel, I stood for a moment among the American business peple and the western tourists with their cameras slung around their necks, and I thought, where do I belong? Here, where everyone except the desk staff looks like my parents, but thinks and speaks the way I do? Or out there in the real China where everyone looks like me, even though I can’t understand a single word they say? (pg. 110)

Her mom’s annoyance and anger with Kelly reveals her plan to move them from Toronto to Brantford to live with her Auntie Lou, giving them a fresh start.  Kelly is devastated, believing that her father would never come home then, disregarding the countless emails she’s sent him without response.

Their arrival in Yangshuo, ever closer to her finding place i.e., the spot where she’d been abandoned, brings them in contact with other parents picking up their adopted children, including a Toronto woman Clare whom Kelly met at the Bejing hotel and was adopting a child from the very orphanage that Kelly had resided in before her own adoption.

But, just like life, things do not run smoothly. Clare’s baby, Phoenix, is ill and may be kept from adoption; Mom did not apply for permission to visit the orphanage; and Kelly, who’d been convinced that her mother had been keeping her dad away, learns the real reason for his absence.  A life-threatening situation finally helps Kelly realize what she has in the way of an identity and that what seems like an end might just be a beginning.

I have always believed that every child should be able to see themselves somewhere in the books, hence the push for diversity in literature.  The Finding Place opens up that door to children who became part of new families through international adoption, here specifically from China.  Kelly’s story and perhaps that of Clare and Phoenix may or may not be similar to those of other girls adopted from China but it provides a starting place for filling in the blanks of their adoption and heritage.  Julie Hartley’s rigourous research (an interview with Julie Hartley at the end of the book will attest to this) provides a more complete background for Kelly’s story, though The Finding Place is still much more than a story of a child’s adoption.  It’s her story, absolutely, but it’s of finding herself: her beginnings, her place as a daughter, friend and niece, and as a part of a broken family.  Her struggles with self-determination and self-acceptance are the greater story of The Finding Place, though China does become the finding place by definition in a far greater manner than mother and daughter probably could ever have imagined.

Best Friends Through Eternity

by Sylvia McNicoll

Tundra Books

978-1-77049-710-8 

192 pp.

Ages 12+

For release February 10, 2015

Most of us dream of the opportunity for a do-over after we've messed up something big.  The regret and/or guilt can be overwhelming.  But what if a do-over was possible but you'd have to be careful not to make matters worse.  Would you do it?  What if you thought you had nothing to lose because you were already dead?

Fourteen-year-old Paige Barta is willing to take that chance after she is killed by a train walking home from school, believing she should have been trying to help her best friend Jasmine (Jazz).  Jazz had been off with her new boyfriend, Cameron, unaware that Cameron's ex, the vicious Vanessa, was plotting an attack. Angrily taking off when she should have been waiting for Jazz,  Paige finds herself laying in a hospital bed, unconscious and dying.  But meeting up on an after-life beach with a childhood friend, Kim, who'd been adopted from China as was Paige, gives the teen the chance for a retake of the past week.

So now Paige has to rethink everything she has said and done, knowing this is her chance to make things right, without letting on that she's going to die or that she knows about the future attack on Jazz.  However, Paige is also rethinking her attitudes about her adoption, about her parents, about Kim's death of which she'd been unaware, about the friendly Max Liu, and even about her food choices.  Being given the chance to make different choices, however, doesn't mean those choices are necessarily better, and Paige learns that sometimes, no matter what, you can't control everything.

Though life-and-death do-overs (is there an actual term for this?) have been popularized in movies and in TV shows, it's a tough one to do well in text, especially for young people for whom the idea of death is often completely unimaginable.  Sylvia McNicoll has shown that she has a knack for writing great teen voices and a strong record for bringing the issue of death into the realm of youth, having made it a focus in books such as crush.candy.corpse (Lorimer, 2012), Dying to Go Viral (Fitzhenry & Whiteside, 2013) and Revenge on the Fly (Pajama Press, 2014). But the focus is not on the morbid but the life lead and the choices made for purposeful lives. Although Paige is shocked to learn she is dying and that Kim has died and that others may die as a result of her actions, her focus remains on choices made with compassion rather than anger and bitterness.  It's a lesson we could all learn.  Too bad Paige–and probably everyone who has ever lived–doesn't learn this lesson until it's too late.  Fortunately, in Best Friends Through Eternity, Sylvia McNicoll gives Paige another chance to show us how it's done.

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If you get the chance, check out the book launch for Best Friends Through Eternity, this weekend in Burlington, Ontario. Sylvia McNicoll puts on a great book launch!