The Peasant Prince (Li Cunxin & Anne Spudvilas, Viking, $29.95 hb, ISBN 9780670070541, November) *****

In a small remote village in the northern part of China lived a young boy with his parents and six brothers. This was a poor family living in the time of Chairman Mao’s communist China and each night the boy’s niang prayed that none of her boys would die from starvation. However Li’s life changed forever when, at the age of 10, he was given a rare opportunity to become a dancer at the Beijing Dance Academy. Li was 11 when he left his home and family and it would be quite some time before he saw his parents again. Many years later on the night of the grand opening of the Nutcraker Suite on an American ballet stage, Li discovered that his parents had travelled from China to see him dance. At last Li realised all that he had worked for and prepared himself to dance the dance of a lifetime. The Peasant Prince is a retelling of Li Cunxin’s bestselling autobiography Mao’s Last Dancer suitable for readers four years and over. Award-winning illustrator Anne Spudvilas studied Chinese brush-painting to authenticate her work for this project and her haunting illustrations make a beautiful accompaniment to the narration of an extraordinary life, skillfully retold for younger readers.

Candice Cappe manages the National Library of Australia Bookshop in Canberra

This review from Australian Bookseller & Publisher magazine is reproduced by kind permission of Thorpe-Bowker, a division of R R Bowker LLC. © Copyright 2007, Thorpe-Bowker