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In the Eye of War
During the final days of the Japanese occupation of China, Shao-shao celebrates his tenth birthday, observes traditional holidays with his family, and befriends the daughter of a traitor.
198 pages, Hardcover
First published April 30, 1990
22 people want to read
About the author
Margaret Chang
7 books2 followers“Long ago, when I was sitting in my high chair in California having breakfast, my mother used to think, ‘The boy Margaret’s going to marry is somewhere eating his cornflakes.’ Little did she know.
“I grew up as an only child in Whittier, a suburb of Los Angeles, surrounded by people like my parents—transplanted Middle Westerners. Just beyond Whittier’s city limits stretched a vast, intriguing, multicultural city. I was five when we went downtown to eat Chinese food at Tang’s. It tasted a lot better than my mother’s Indiana cooking, and I still remember the small dish of yellow mustard with a drop of bright red hot sauce in the middle.
“My parents took me to the beach whenever they could, beginning my lifelong love of the Pacific shore. Another family pleasure was reading. Every night before bedtime, my father read aloud to me. I met Dorothy Gale, Robin Hood, Mowgli, D’Artagnan, Jo March, and brave, determined children from the Grimm and Andersen fairy tales. Later, reading on my own, I discovered Jane Eyre, Elizabeth Bennet, and Anna Karenina. But I never stopped reading children’s books.
“After graduating from Scripps College with a degree in English and a minor in art, I went east to library school at Rutgers to become a children’s librarian. I worked as an elementary school librarian for the Lexington Public Schools in Massachusetts and as a children’s librarian for the New York Public Library. I met Raymond Chang, the boy who’d been eating his rice porridge in Shanghai while I was having breakfast in my high chair in California. We married at my home in Whittier and moved to Williamstown, Massachusetts, where Raymond taught chemistry at Williams College for many years. We have one daughter. With her, I returned to the West Coast for yearly visits with my parents and our Chinese family.
“A master’s degree from the Center for the Study of Children’s Literature at Simmons College enabled me to pursue two parallel careers: writing and teaching. While Raymond and I coauthored four children’s books set in China, I taught both graduate and undergraduate students of children’s literature at Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts in North Adams. The Institutes offered by Children’s Literature New England (CLNE) inspired my teaching for twenty years.
“After taking a long break from teaching to finish Celia’s Robot, I expect to continue writing stories and promoting children’s literature for many years to come.”
How Celia’s Robot Came to Be:
“I was thirteen when I discovered science fiction. Even though the characters were mostly active guys and helpless girls (because the books were written mostly by men), I loved science fiction for the same reasons I had loved fairy tales and fantasy as a child: I could leave my everyday life behind and travel to worlds of imagination and possibility. It wasn’t long before I read Isaac Asimov’s I Robot series, with its Laws of Robotics.
“When I was a school librarian at Joseph Estabrook Elementary School in Lexington, Massachusetts, I loved talking to boys and girls about all kinds of books, from my favorite childhood family stories such as the Little House books to fantasies such as The Chronicles of Narnia books and Lloyd Alexander’s The Chronicles of Prydain.
“My marriage to Raymond Chang, who grew up in Shanghai, China, during World War II and the civil war that followed, made me part of a large Chinese family. My mother-in-law welcomed me, though she didn’t speak a word of English, and taught me to cook some of Raymond’s favorite dishes. I read about the events and beliefs that shaped his family’s life and carried what I learned into the field of children’s books.
Raymond and I had already written a popular book on the Chinese language when I took a graduate course in writing for children that led to a novel and three picture books set in China, coauthored with Raymond. Because I was also te
“I grew up as an only child in Whittier, a suburb of Los Angeles, surrounded by people like my parents—transplanted Middle Westerners. Just beyond Whittier’s city limits stretched a vast, intriguing, multicultural city. I was five when we went downtown to eat Chinese food at Tang’s. It tasted a lot better than my mother’s Indiana cooking, and I still remember the small dish of yellow mustard with a drop of bright red hot sauce in the middle.
“My parents took me to the beach whenever they could, beginning my lifelong love of the Pacific shore. Another family pleasure was reading. Every night before bedtime, my father read aloud to me. I met Dorothy Gale, Robin Hood, Mowgli, D’Artagnan, Jo March, and brave, determined children from the Grimm and Andersen fairy tales. Later, reading on my own, I discovered Jane Eyre, Elizabeth Bennet, and Anna Karenina. But I never stopped reading children’s books.
“After graduating from Scripps College with a degree in English and a minor in art, I went east to library school at Rutgers to become a children’s librarian. I worked as an elementary school librarian for the Lexington Public Schools in Massachusetts and as a children’s librarian for the New York Public Library. I met Raymond Chang, the boy who’d been eating his rice porridge in Shanghai while I was having breakfast in my high chair in California. We married at my home in Whittier and moved to Williamstown, Massachusetts, where Raymond taught chemistry at Williams College for many years. We have one daughter. With her, I returned to the West Coast for yearly visits with my parents and our Chinese family.
“A master’s degree from the Center for the Study of Children’s Literature at Simmons College enabled me to pursue two parallel careers: writing and teaching. While Raymond and I coauthored four children’s books set in China, I taught both graduate and undergraduate students of children’s literature at Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts in North Adams. The Institutes offered by Children’s Literature New England (CLNE) inspired my teaching for twenty years.
“After taking a long break from teaching to finish Celia’s Robot, I expect to continue writing stories and promoting children’s literature for many years to come.”
How Celia’s Robot Came to Be:
“I was thirteen when I discovered science fiction. Even though the characters were mostly active guys and helpless girls (because the books were written mostly by men), I loved science fiction for the same reasons I had loved fairy tales and fantasy as a child: I could leave my everyday life behind and travel to worlds of imagination and possibility. It wasn’t long before I read Isaac Asimov’s I Robot series, with its Laws of Robotics.
“When I was a school librarian at Joseph Estabrook Elementary School in Lexington, Massachusetts, I loved talking to boys and girls about all kinds of books, from my favorite childhood family stories such as the Little House books to fantasies such as The Chronicles of Narnia books and Lloyd Alexander’s The Chronicles of Prydain.
“My marriage to Raymond Chang, who grew up in Shanghai, China, during World War II and the civil war that followed, made me part of a large Chinese family. My mother-in-law welcomed me, though she didn’t speak a word of English, and taught me to cook some of Raymond’s favorite dishes. I read about the events and beliefs that shaped his family’s life and carried what I learned into the field of children’s books.
Raymond and I had already written a popular book on the Chinese language when I took a graduate course in writing for children that led to a novel and three picture books set in China, coauthored with Raymond. Because I was also te
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