A review by alicezothers
Lady of Ch'iao Kuo: Red Bird of the South, Southern China, A.D. 531 by Laurence Yep

At age 9, I remember feeling very glad to have read this book set in southern China. But coming back to it, now 24, the characters are colorless. They have no personalities, and I think children's books, even and especially, should have three-dimensional characters. I understand it can be harder to do that with historical fiction, so many of the facts and events of the characters already set in place.