Friday, April 24, 2015

Under a Painted Sky by Stacey Lee

Under a Painted Sky
Author: Stacey Lee
Lexile: Unknown
Length: 374 Pages
Genre: Historical Fiction
Awards: None
Reading Ram Star Rating: 4 out of 5 Stars

     
           Samantha's dream is to one day be a professional musician and play in New York City. A hard dream to accomplish. Harder if you're a girl, even harder if you're Chinese and it's 1849. So Samantha is stuck in St. Joe, Missouri, living with her father who runs a store with supplies for the Gold Diggers headed to California.  But one day a tragic accident ensures that she will never see her dream to its end. Samantha has to team up with a runaway slave named Annamae, and together they brave the Oregon Trail. Life on the trail is hard for two girls, so they pretend to be Sammy and Andy, just another pair of boys looking to get rich off of gold. The girls get closer and closer as they form a powerful friendship between them. With the help of some extremely kind cowboys, they set off, trying to avoid law and keep a low profile. They soon learn that life on the open field, may seem free and cheerful, but is full of more dangers then either of them ever imagined. 
         I really liked this book a lot, it was written so nicely. It was almost like poetry! I also loved all the references to the Chinese calender. Like Year of the Dragon, Year of the Rabbit, that kind of thing. Samantha judged people by the characteristics, and the most surprising part, she was right! Like a person who was born in the Year of the Rabbit actually had those characteristics. It was freaky! I would recommend this book to 6th graders and up, it had a little bit of inappropriate stuff in it. You should really try it out in your free time.  

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