Graphic Universe’s much anticipated and beautifully produced new book Little White Duck: A Childhood in China received a star review from Kirkus. The book is about sisters growing up in Wuhan, China immediately following the Cultural Revolution and Chairman Mao Zedong’s decades-long reign. Kirkus calls Little White Duck, “a striking glimpse into Chinese girlhood during the 1970s and ’80s.”

Based on the early life of the book’s author, Na Liu—now a doctor of hematology and oncology—and illustrated by her husband, Andrés Vera Martínez—an award-winning artist and graduate from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and the School of Visual Arts—this page-turner is described by Kirkus as “beautifully drawn and quietly evocative.” The book explores, in eight stories, the childhood of the author—who was nicknamed Da Qin (Big Piano) and her younger sister, Xiao Qin (little piano), in Wuhan, one of the nation’s largest cities, right along the Yangtze. Different aspects of China’s history are weaved into the book—from the “Four Pests Campaign” (a time in the late 1950s and early 1960s when the country fought back against the ravages of rats, flies, mosquitoes, and cockroaches) to the observance of the Chinese New Year—Na’s favorite holiday and a time of national pride and great celebration.

Judging by its initial reception, this book’s universal appeal has the ability to educate and inspire young and old and people from a wide range of ethnic and religious backgrounds. In other words, this book is a clear winner.