The Five Chinese Brothers (Paperstar)

What's interesting is all these adults putting their 2 cents in determining what a child would think about the book. Maybe you do have to worry maybe you don't, but my childhood memories go back at least this far. This was one of my favorite books even and even though it had problems as a child nothing bothered me. I knew that it it stereotyped and that something was wrong with the person who did that. I knew that they tried to kill a brother, but I always believed that Good Trumps Evil every time, I was really to young to know anything about death nor did I really care. I also noticed the brothers looked the same, but to me they were just quintuplets. Did it change the way I viewed Chinese NO. In fact it made me think the artist who drew the pictures had the problem and the Chinese were all the good guys with cool super powers.

This is an absolute classic, and one all children should enjoy. There are two valuable lessons for children to learn - listen to adults (especially if you don't know how to swim!) and families always stick together, no matter the cost. The various PC gripes from the 1970's don't really hold up anymore as the stereotypes are so old as to be unrecognizable by small children. Quite the opposite should hold true - this is an old Chinese story and failure to tell it would result in one less bit of Chinese culture brought to western children. More importantly, kids love it.