Ties That Bind, Ties That Break

Information about the book

* Title of the book: Ties That Bind, Ties That Break.

* Author: Lensey Namioka

* Number of pages: 160 pages the normal paperback version, 154~ pages the pocket version.

* Year of publication: First published on January 1st 1999 by Hampton Brown, then re published on November 14th 2000 by Laurel Leaf.

* ISBN 0440415993

* Literary awards: Rebecca Caudill Young Reader's Book Award Nominee (2002), Deutscher Jugendliteraturpreis Nominee for Preis der Jugendjury (2005), Washington State Book Award (2000)

Information about the author


Lensey Chao (赵来思) is a is a Chinese-born American writer of books for young adults and children. She was born on June 14th, 1929 in Beijing and then moved with her family to Hawaii in 1937 to fled away from the Japanese invasion. She is the daughter of linguist Yuen Ren Chao and physician Buwei Yang Chao. After some time, her family moved to Cambridge. Lensey knew no English when her family arrived the United States, so she found out that maths used the same numerals regardless of language and developped an ease towards maths. Lensey attended grade school in Cambridge and excelled at mathematics.


Lensey Chao attended Radcliffe College and the University of California at Berkeley, where her father was a professor of Asian Studies, to study mathematics. Here she met and married Isaac Namioka, a fellow graduate student who was born in Japan. Namioka ended up earning a bachelor's and a master's degree in math. The Namiokas moved to Ithaca, New York, where Isaac taught at Cornell University, and Lensey taught at Wells College. The family moved to Seattle in 1963, when Isaac accepted a position at the University of Washington.


Namioka has two daughters, Aki (born 1959) and Michi (born 1961).


When she was eight, she wrote her first book. It was about a woman warrior called the Princess with a Bamboo Sword. In the 1970s, on a visit to Japan, Namioka visited Namioka Castle. The experience inspired her to learn more about the samurai. This study culminated in The Samurai and the Long-nosed Devils, which was published in 1976. Namioka expanded this book into a whole series of books about samurai. Namioka also wrote a series of books about a Chinese American family named Yang, and several books about young women and girls facing difficult choices.


Something interesting about Lensey is that her name cannot be written in Chinese. Her father, who chose the name, realised there were two syllabes wich were possible in the Chinese language, but no word contained them. These syllabes could be written in English as "len" and "sey". In fact, she's the only person known with the first name "Lensey"

Yuen Ren Chao
                                 ↘                              

Buwei Yang Chao
↙

Lensey Namioka

Sources:

* https://www.amazon.es/Ties-That-Bind-Break/dp/0440415993

http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/962767.Ties_That_Bind_Ties_That_Break

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ties_that_Bind,_Ties_that_Break

* http://www.randomhouse.com/teachers/catalog/display.pperl?isbn=9780440415992&view=tg

* https://www.amazon.com/Ties-That-Bind-Break/dp/B004HOXZM0

* https://www.amazon.com/Ties-That-Bind-Break/dp/0440415993

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lensey_Namioka

* http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/26612.Lensey_Namioka

* http://biography.jrank.org/pages/1242/Namioka-Lensey-1929-Sidelights.html