The Five Chinese Brothers

Five brothers who look just alike outwit the executioner by using their extraordinary individual qualities.

Five brothers who look just alike outwit the executioner by using their extraordinary individual qualities.

Authentic retelling of the classic Chinese folktale of the seven brothers and their supernatural gifts.

Five brothers who look alike use their extraordinary individual skills to outwit the cruel Chinese emperor.

When the Khmer Rouge came to power in Cambodia in 1975, they inherited a war-ravaged and internationally isolated country. Pol Pot’s government espoused the rhetoric of self-reliance, but Democratic Kampuchea was utterly dependent on Chinese foreign aid and technical assistance to survive. Yet in a markedly asymmetrical relationship between a modernizing, nuclear power and a virtually premodern state, China was largely unable to use its power to influence Cambodian politics or policy. In Brothers in Arms, Andrew Mertha traces this surprising lack of influence to variations between the Chinese and Cambodian institutions that administered military aid, technology transfer, and international trade. Today, China’s extensive engagement with the developing world suggests an inexorably rising China in the process of securing a degree of economic and political dominance that was unthinkable even a decade ago. Yet, China’s experience with its first-ever client state suggests that the effectiveness of Chinese foreign aid, and influence that comes with it, is only as good as the institutions that manage the relationship. By focusing on the links between China and Democratic Kampuchea, Mertha peers into the “black box” of Chinese foreign aid to illustrate how domestic institutional fragmentation limits Beijing’s ability to influence the countries that accept its assistance.

Six look-alike Chinese brothers, each with a special talent, manage to outwit the king's executioner.

Helen Bannerman, who was born in Edinburgh in 1863, lived in India for thirty years. As a gift for her two little girls, she wrote and illustrated The Story of Little Black Sambo (1899), a story that clearly takes place in India (with its tigers and "ghi," or melted butter), even though the names she gave her characters belie that setting. For this new edition of Bannerman's much beloved tale, the little boy, his mother, and his father have all been give authentic Indian names: Babaji, Mamaji, and Papaji. And Fred Marcellino's high-spirited illustrations lovingly, memorably transform this old favorite. He gives a classic story new life.

Three soldiers came marching down the road towards a French village. The peasants, seeing them coming, suddenly became very busy, for soldiers are often hungry. So all the food was hidden under mattresses or in barns. There followed a battle of wits, with the soldiers equal to the occasion. Stone soup? Why, of course, they could make a wonderful soup of stones...but, of course, one must add a carrot or two...some meat...so it went. Marcia Brown has made of this old tale a carnival of activity, dancing, and laughter. Children who have once heard the story will turn to this book again and again, retelling the story for themselves. Now in an eBook edition!