Jean Fritz China's Long March

Annotation

From award-winning children's author Jean Fritz comes theincredible true account of the Long March, a six-thousand-mile journey acrossChinaIn 1986, Jean Fritz went to China and talked to survivors ofthe Long March. It is from their recollections and her own broad, personalknowledge of Chinese history that Fritz has written one of the most compellingaccounts of the incredible six-thousand-mile journey across China made by theCommunist Army in 1934 and 1935. Fritz takes us on the route of the sixty-mile-long FirstFront Army, the unit of Mao Zedong that wound its way through a terrain soperilous it was often more threatening than their battles with the enemy. Thefear of a young soldier on Old Mountain afraid to go to sleep in case he mightroll over and fall off the cliff is real to us; the drama and devastation thatreduced the Red Army to twenty thousand men and women are immediate. And whenthe army crosses the thundering Dadu River on the threadbare remains of abridge, we cross our fingers and hope to make it, too. Skillfully placing events within the context of history,Fritz allows us to view them with the perspective of time, and, as she sharesthe memories of those she talked with, she brings humanness and intimacy to theparticipants and their unforgettable journey.