~Bound~

-by Donna Jo Napoli

Bound was one of the two books that the school gave to us for the summer read. After I figured out the mystery of it, it was pretty conventional. Although I enjoyed it, it is easy to predict what would come next, because of the retelling of the loved fairytale

Xing Xing is a Chinese teen-aged girl that lost her father when she was young, and her mother younger still. She lives in a cave with her step-mother, and step-sister that has her feet bound. If a Chinese girl is born in the family, they are thought of as useless. Xing Xing's father thought otherwise. He taught her how to read, and write poems in beautiful calligraphy. Her father was a potter, so sometimes he asked her to write poems on his pottery.

When Xing Xing's mother dies, her deathbed wish was that Xing Xing would care for her father, just the way a wife would do, and for her to hear his last words. Of course, her father believed that they should make this wish come true, so it was Xing Xing that dressed, cleaned, and cooked for her father, not her step-mother. This made her step-mother angry, but she started to pay more attention to her own daughter, and her feet, rather than her husband. After her father dies, the step-mother gets her revenge by forcing her to work cleaning and cooking at the cave. But since her father died in an accident, she never got to hear his last words. Words that would lead to chance her life forever.