Chinese Cinderella

Author: Yen Mah, Adeline

Interest age: from c 7 years

Published on 23 February 2023 by Penguin Random House Children's UK (Penguin Books Ltd) in the United Kingdom as part of 'the Rebel Voices: Puffin Classics International Women’s Day Collection' series.

Rebel Voices: Disruptive Stories from Trailblazing Women - a new Puffin Classics collection, celebrating International Women's Day 2023To me, writing was pure pleasure. It thrilled me to be able to escape the horrors of my daily life in such a simple way. When I wrote, I forgot that I was the unwanted daughter who caused her mother's death. I could be anybody I wished to be.

When her mother dies shortly after her birth, lonely Adeline is marked as 'bad luck' and treated as an outcast by her own family, shown kindness only by her grandfather and Aunt Baba who encourage her to follow her dreams.

Adeline strives to win her father's acceptance by excelling in school, but instead discovers an escape in the friendships of her classmates and her talent for writing. For the first time Adeline allows herself to dream of a real future as a writer and yearns to study in England with her brother - but it is a future she will have to fight with every ounce of strength she has to achieve. Chinese Cinderella is Adeline Yen Mah's true story of survival and self-acceptance during her childhood as an unwanted daughter, and how she overcame her past to believe in a better future.

Rebel Voices is a new six-part Puffin Classics collection of strikingly designed, highly collectible books, written by female authors, and celebrating courage, rebellion, strength and inspiration