Written for young people, this first person coming of age account of the cultural revolution might be better read by adults. Adults could more easily discern the subtle clues of how good became evil, how success became disaster, how the respect afforded elderly people became scorn, and the incredible destruction of lives and property. Mao is credited with something like 40-60 MILLION deaths, many of which occurred during this tumultuous time, and as the very personal story of one family in Shanghai, it makes for heavy material. 
 The first person narrative does not illuminate any of these things for young readers, but rather seeks to simply recount the desperate situation in which the 12-14 year old authoress finds herself. Although this has tremendous historical value, the young woman is, quite bluntly, clueless as to what is going on around her. The adults, be they teachers or parents, do nothing to either help her navigate the storm or even understand what is going on. 
 Perhaps in the hands of a good teacher, the text could be suitably illuminated. The simple approach does make a well written and informative book, but sensitive students, students without a good understanding of world history, students who lack discernment, student who lack aptitude in social/ political interpretation and students who generally lean toward the positives of the world are going to have trouble digesting this distressing material without assistance. 
 I would recommend this for high school reading for the majority of students. 
 As a side note, I was confused by the reference on page 155 to praying to Allah. It was unclear to me whether the family was Muslim (something that was not mentioned) or the writer had made an odd choice in translation. Allah appears several other times in the text with a couple references to "God" and the family's Muslim faith is clarified in the end notes. 
 The other niggling thing for me was the ending in general. The text opens with an idyllic picture of her early childhood and quickly plummets into the Cultural Revolution. The conclusion resolves with the young woman's determined allegiance to her family two years into the Revolution after many personal, familial and communal trials. Yet the Cultural Revolution continued an ADDITIONAL 8 years and was only abandoned on the occasion of Mao's death. It remains a difficult topic in today's China where the Communist Party tries to connect itself with Mao's sovereignty while denying the catastrophic failure of his policies. How did they survive? What was her path to an education? Did the party accept the family? Was she a black whelp for the remainder of her time in China? The end notes tie some (but not all) these threads together in the big picture, but not with the detail of the account in the narrative, which to me was unsatisfying and abrupt. 
 Meanwhile the end note in which she asserts that everyone was "brainwashed" and "deceived" by Mao rang hollow to me and came too late to provide context for young people. This is NOT the first or only or even last (God help us!) time such atrocities have happened. More often than not, they are centered around a totalitarian will to power. 
 I think I would have preferred the end notes to be placed at the beginning of the book to help provide readers, particularly young adults, with the realization that mass deception is a central theme of the upcoming devastation. If it had been written toward adults, I think I would have given 4 stars, but as it is directed at kids, and needs to be handled with care, I am giving it 3.