Laurence Yep,
The Amah
Putnam Publishing, 1999.

Revisiting characters from earlier books (Ribbons and The Cook's Family), Yep follows another one of the girls who are part of a group of friends Iiving in a contemporary Bay Area city. Amy Chin is practicing her ballet role as one of the evil stepsisters in Cinderella while she struggles with increased responsibilities at home when her mother takes a job as an amah, or governess, to a wealthy, and seemingly perfect girl about the same age as Amy. Amy struggles with feelings of inadequacy and frustration and, of course, learns a lesson about people and herself.

The story is a bit formulaic, but Yep also manages to convey, for the most part, believable characters. The Chinatown residents and the characters from the previous books are obviously close to Yep's heart, but some characters are just there to move the story along, and he has a tendency, especially in this "Young Adult" category, to keep those characters very hollow.

Sumi Hayashi