Bound

Marley McDonnough

Mrs. White

Honors World History

13 October 2014

Bound

By: Donna Jo Napoli

Characters:
Xing Xing- "Lazy One," main character
Wei Ping- Xing Xing's half sister
Stepmother- Xing Xing's father's second wife
Master Wu- Xing Xing's father
Master Tang- Friend of Master Wu
Mei Zing- Master Tang's wife 
Yao Wang- "medicine king"

Summary: 
Xing Xing, a young girl with a hard life, lives with her stepmother because both of her parents have passed away. Without a mom or a dad, there is no one to arrange a marriage for her. On the other hand, her stepmother has already started planning arrangements for a marriage for Xing Xing's half sister, Wei Ping. Xing Xing has to take care of Wei Ping and does all the other work, because her stepmother started binding her feet at age fifteen, when it is normally started out as a child, this causes it to be a much more painful process. Although Xing Xing does a majority of the work, her stepmother consistently calls her "Lazy One." Xing Xing enjoys fish, one special one in particular. She often "offered the fish a bit of her meal" every morning and evening that Xing Xing visited the "beautiful fish" (Napoli 64). She saw this fish as a reincarnation of her deceased mother. Stepmother eventually kills Xing Xing's "mother" fish. Xing Xing was furious that she killed her fish; "It must have been hard to kill such a large fish...What knife did you use? The cleaver?" she says to her stepmother in anger (Napoli 139). Stepmother takes Wei Ping to a festival in town, where she intends to find her a husband. Xing Xing finds a note written by her mother which leads her to a beautiful dress, pearls, a feathered cloak, and a pair of gold slippers. This leads Xing Xing to sneak over to the festival. She gets seen by Wei Ping and her stepmother and begins to run. One of her gold shoes come off; she stopped to go back and get it but a man had already picked it up. She ran all the way home upset, and disappointed that she lost her mother's shoe. When stepmother and Wei Ping got home, they told Xing Xing they saw a girl at the festival who looked just like her. The prince soon comes to visit, looking for the girl who's foot fits in this rare gold shoe. He finds out that Xing Xing was the owner of this missing shoe. Xing Xing leaves her stepmother to go off and live with the prince.

Quotes:

• "There are dragons on your sleeves, my mother was a carp." (Napoli 183) Xing Xing says this to the prince.
• "Beautiful fish, mother fish, come to me." (Napoli 136) This is Xing Xing trying to talk to her mother, even though she knows she is not going to come to her because her stepmother killed her.
• "But if you will help find Wei Ping a husband, I will take her second son and raise him as though he were yours." (Napoli 59) This is what stepmother says to Master Wu when they go speak to him at his grave. She clearly does not care much for Xing Xing.

Author and Sources:
Donna Jo Napoli is a linguist and a writer of children's fiction. She is married to a professor of health law, and has five children. Donna Jo lives outside of Philadelphia, and has written several essays about children's literature and writing for children. She received her Bachelors degree in mathematics in 1970 and her Ph.D. in Romance Languages and Literatures in 1973. She earned both of these degrees from Harvard University. She held a grant from the American Association of University Women for research pursuant to fiction writing. Also, in 1995, Donna Jo won a Leeway Foundation Award for Excellence in Fiction Writing. To learn more about Donna Jo Napoli visit www.donnajonapoli.com

Critique:

I found this book to be very interesting. It was just like one of the Cinderella stories, but an ancient Chinese version. I was happy that Xing Xing ending up living happily because she deserved too, after living such a hard life. She had to answer to all of her cruel stepmother's commands, therefore, she deserved to finally be free. I found it interesting that she was born with decently small feet, and she was lucky she did not have to have them bound. I think this could be a great book for anyone to read, because it would be interesting for all ages.