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Today is Ghost Festival here in China. It is not as popularly known abroad like Spring Festival, but I think it is far more interesting. It is the Chinese festival that is most similar to Halloween, so it is becoming a bit more popular over here among young people. In Chinese, we call Ghost Festival Zhongyuan Read More

Chapter One “You’re it!” one of the kids yelled as she caught sight of Lihua. Lihua squealed with laughter as she stood up from her hiding place and looked for the other children. She easily found two other girls who couldn’t stop laughing. They jumped up and playfully fought over who would actually be it. Read More

All of the elephants wept as one of their own lay dying in childbirth. But Kanita, the daughter of the royal elephant trainer, refused to give up. With her own hands, she helped bring the baby elephant, Safi, into the world, beginning a lifelong friendship between a girl and her elephant. But many of the Read More

While A Girl and Her Elephant is about Kanita (the girl) and Safi (her elephant), they do happen to run across a prince. I’m not going to give anything away about that, but I had picked the name “Mongkut” for the prince because it means “crown” in Thai. But while I was researching Thailand’s history, Read More

After watching her parents serve in British households for her whole life, Priya has grown to despise every aspect of British colonialism. To avoid being assigned to a servant position of her own, Priya runs away from home the night before her sixteenth birthday. But she doesn’t get far. Alone on the streets of Mumbai, Read More

Lihua never could have imagined that the birth of a little brother would end the life she knew. Raised in a poor country village, Lihua prayed her parents would have a son to bring peace and balance to the family. But she did not foresee how living in such poverty would force her parents to Read More

Chapter One The cries from the elephant could be heard throughout the jungle. Kanita could no longer ignore the elephant’s suffering. Even though her father—he king’s mahout—had warned her to stay away, she had to see what was happening for herself. She snuck out of her bedroom window and ran through the jungle to the Read More

All of the elephants wept as one of their own lay dying in childbirth. But Kanita, the daughter of the royal elephant trainer, refused to give up. With her own hands, she helped bring the baby elephant, Safi, into the world, beginning a lifelong friendship between a girl and her elephant. But many of the Read More