Wen Zhou and her best friend Henry have a goal in sight. They want to sit an entrance exam to

“…an amazing, government-funded selective school,”

hoping their lives will change for the better. As children of immigrants to Australia, they have had to work twice as hard as their classmates, struggling with a new language and customs others take for granted.

The new school offers excellent programs for both of them. Henry’s strengths are science and maths, and Wen’s are athletics, arts, and English. They are both studying hard, doing extra homework and study classes, with the support of their teacher and friends who believe in them.

If only the exam was the hardest part. Wen’s father controls everything she and her mother does. Wen is too scared to tell him about the exam, knowing instinctively he will prevent it. He never gives permission for her to attend her friend’s birthday parties and she is ordered to go straight home after school every day.

He controls what his mother wears, how many dishes she must put on the table every night and where she goes. Fear rules the Zhou household.

Henry’s home isn’t much better, with his parents having their own struggles in this so called ‘lucky’ country.

When a terrible tragedy upends their lives, Wen has to find the strength to keep their dream alive, not knowing she will change many lives forever.

Uplifting and sad at the same time, my heartbeat raced along with Wen’s as she navigated the ticking time-bomb that is her tyrannical control-freak father in her everyday home life.

The growing bond between Wen and her mother is wonderful to watch as they gain control of their own lives through kindnesses to others.

Author – Rebecca Lim

Age – 10+

Find Teachers Notes and an Excerpt here

(2021, Allen & Unwin, Immigrant, Chinese, Australia, Exam, Control, Fear, Mental Abuse, Family, Shame, Homework, School, Courage, Kindness, Bully, Grief, Poverty, Empathy, Neighbourhood)