Ties That Bind, Ties That Break

Information about the book


Title: Ties That Bind, Ties That Break

Date of Publication: November 14th  2000

Editorial House: Laurel Leaf

Format: Paperback

Number of Pages: 160

Language of Edition: English

Other editions: The book has also been published by editorial houses such as Puffin, Beltz, Thorndike Press, among others. It also has an e-book version published by Laurel Leaf and an Audio CD released by Blackstone Audiobooks.

Information about the author 

Lensey Namioka, was born in Beijing, China, on the 14th of June of 1929. She is the third daughter of Yuenren Chao who was a linguist. Her mother, Buwei Yang Chao was a physician. In 1937, when she and her family were living in Nanjing, they had to flee the country to scape the Japanese invasion. They arrived to Hawaii and then moved to Cambridge, Massachusetts. 

Namioka studied mathematics at the University of California at Berkeley. There, she met Isaac Namioka, who became her husband. They moved to Ithaca, New York, where Isaac taught at Cornell University while Lensey taught at Wells College. They have two daughters. The first one, Aki, was born in 1959. Then, in 1961 her sister Michi was born. Two years later, the family moved to Seattle because Lensey accepted to work at the University of Washington. 

Her best- known work might be the short story "The All-American Slurp".  Other titles include Who's Hu?, Phantom of Tiger Mountain, The Laziest Boy In The World, among others. Thanks to her book Ties That Bind, Ties That Break, this Chinese-born American writer won the California Young Reader Medal and the Washington State Governor's Writers Award. Besides that, her book was chosen as one of the American Library Association's 10 Best Books for Young People. 

Curious facts about the author

• Her name, Lensey, cannot be represented in Chinese characters.
• After visiting the Namioka Castle in 1970, she felt inspired to learn about the samurai. Later on in 1976 she wrote The Samurai and the Long-nosed Devils.
• She wrote her first book whe she was eight years old.

Information taken from:

• http://www.edhelper.com/ReadingComprehension_54_3972.html 

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

• https://howold.co/lensey-namioka

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