Rebels of the Heavenly Kingdom, written by Katherine Paterson, is a book about a young boy, named Wang Lee who lived in province of Hunan. Wang Lee is kidnapped by bandits, and is forced to stay with them, because the bandits threatened to kill his parents if he escaped. The bandits were poor and wanted money, so a person offered to buy him, and the bandits gladly sold him. This person who bought Wang Lee happened to be a women and one of the “Rebels of the Heavenly Kingdom.” This was shocking to Wang Lee because he has never seen a woman so burly before, and her feet were not bound, like the other women he has seen. Her name was Mei Lin. At first Wang Lee was resistant to the thought of becoming one of the rebels, but soon he started to see that most of the people who were in this rebellion were common people like himself. He struggles with these ideas that are completely contradictory to what he has learned as a child, like women being able to show their power, but he learns to accept them. He soon starts to gain a romantic interest in Mei Lin as well. Soon all of the peasants and people of the lower end of the economic ladder start to rebel, creating the Taiping rebellion. Wang Lee starts to realize that these are the people he should always be around. Towards the end of the book, the suspense grows and leaves the reader in a state wondering about whether Wang Lee and Mei Lin will live happily ever after or if the rebellion takes its toll on them as well. The author, Katherine Paterson, grew up in China and was educated in the United States. Her main purpose of writing this book was probably to convey her feeling of China compared to United States, and how growing up there was a lot harder economically than it is here. The main underlying theme that Paterson's theme seemed to portray was the ability to adjust to surroundings, essentially saying that one must be versatile and be able to accept any situation that one may encounter. The book is twenty-one chapters, and all of the chapters progressively show how Wang seems to adapt to numerous new situations.

I thought the book was extremely vivid in describing the different classes of China during that time. All of the descriptions that Katherine Paterson uses of Wang Lee really show how poor some of the people were at that time. The fact that some people were so poor that they had to survive on one small chicken for food was heart rending. Also, the comment that Katherine makes regarding women during the situation really comments on the condition of women’s rights at that time. She describes the “bound feet” of the women. This really shows how women were really restrained at the time compared to now. The reactions that Wang had towards Mei Lin the first time her saw her, he could not believe that there could be a woman that could act in ways that men were acting. This shows that China’s political condition demanding a little bit of change, and the women were able to make large leaps in women’s rights. In Conclusion, this book is not merely a story about a young boy, but of the economic rise of China, as well as the progressive nature of women’s rights in China.

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