Ties that Bind, Ties that Break

Year of Publication: 1999

Editorial House: Random House 

Number of pages: 154

Lensey Namioka

Lensey Namioka is a prolific writer of books for young adults and children. She is best known for the Zenta and Matsuzo Samurai series, tales of adventure and terror that chronicle the exploits of two 16th-century samurai warriors.

Namioka was born in Beijing, China, and came to America when she was nine years old. Lensey is daughter of linguist Yuenren Chao and physician Buwei Yang Chao. 

The family moved often in China. In 1937, the Chaos were living in Nanjing, and fled westward in the face of the Japanese Invasion. They eventually made their way to Hawaii, then Cambridge, Massachusetts. She attended Radcliffe College and the University of California at Berkeley, where she studied mathematics. Her husband, a college math professor, was born in Japan. The Namiokas live in Seattle.

Lensey Namioka is the only person known to have the first name "Lensey." Her name has an especially unusual property for a Chinese person born in China: there are no Chinese characters to represent it. Lensey's father was cataloguing all of the phonemes used in Chinese. He noted that there were two syllables which were possible in the Chinese language, but which were used in no Chinese words. These syllables could be written in English as "len" and "sey." His third daughter was born soon after, and he named her "Lensey."

Namioka has won many awards for her work. For instance, Ties That Bind, Ties That Break was named one of the American Library Association's 10 Best Books for Young People, and also won the California Young Reader Medal and the Washington State Governor's Writers Award. Namioka has also written travel books about Japan and China. 

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Sources: "Lensey Namioka" http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/26612.Lensey_Namioka

"Authors and literary work": https://www.learner.org/workshops/tml/workshop1/authors6.html