See+Saw+Girl

Jade is a girl who would do anything in the world to get away from stitching and doing the laundry. When her Aunt Willow goes off and gets married, Jade decides to sneak into the village and meet her there. She throws a piece of rice paper filled with meat into the chicken pen which causes the chickens to go crazy. Then the dogs roaming around the courtyard smell out the meat and go and attack the chickens and all of the servants go to see what the commotion was about and the courtyard became empty. Jade took this opportunity to dash to the wagon that is taken to town and hides in the baskets to hold food in and is taken to the city. She jumps out and runs into a little girl who tells her the way to Willow's household. On the way there, there is a mob of men who are being brought to the palace for a trial. As she enters the gates of her aunt's household a guard stops her and asks her what she wants. All Jade requests is for a quick visit with Willow but the guard sends her away. When Jade returned home, her mother was not pleased that she had run off and punished her. Jade was made to beat the clothes wrinkle free after they were torn apart at the stitches and cleaned so they could be sewn back together. She is also determined to embroider mountains on her first piece of blue silk fabric. Jade soon realizes that the mountains on the cloth never look quite right and wants to learn how to make them look better. Her brother Tiger was reading a scroll for school that had the picture of mountains on it and she tried to paint that. It was better than the embroidered mountains, but they still didn't look like she wanted them too. There was a festival that all of Jade's family attended and Jade saw her little cousin playing with two sticks and making a small seesaw that flipped up a small coin. The seesaw gave her an idea and she tried to get another cousin to help her but she was too frightened. She asked a cousin who was about eleven to help her make a larger seesaw and jump on it with her, and he agreed. Every time her cousin went down she would fly up and was able to look over the tall wall that covered her view of the mountains. Jade saw everything that she needed to see so she could paint the mountains, trees, bushes, people, and other little details that weren't on the scroll. Jade was finally satisfied when she saw the mountains over the wall.

The women in Korea were more like servants than wives and daughters. Women in richer families spent most of their days doing mainly three things: sewing, cooking, and laundry. I learned that their way of doing the laundry is to rip all of the stitches out of the clothes, wash it and dry it thoroughly and then beating it with a stick or club to get rid of the wrinkles. After that the girls would sew all of the clothes back together and deliver them to the owner. I also learned that the men ate first, served by the women and then the children eat with the women after the men left. Boys in Korea would go to a schoolhouse to learn how to become advisers in the King's court.-Kirstin

The women spent their time sewing, cooking, and doing laundry. The boys in Korea would go to a schoolhouse and they learned how to become advisers in the King's court. What I thought was unfair and kind of different is, they would tear the pieces of laundry and take all of the stitches out. Then they would wash it and dry it. After that they would beat it with a stick to get the wrinkles out. Next they would have to sew the pieces back together. Melissa I would probably recommend this book to anyone who wanted a quick read, yet a decent story. -Kirstin

I would recommend this book because it went really fast. This book always had something going on, instead of explaining things. Melissa