 Hi everyone, my name is Steph, this is Little Bookish Teacher and welcome or welcome back to my channel. Today I have a review of Two Sparrow Hawks in a Lonely Sky by Rebecca Lim. This is a historical middle grade story that I received as a review copy from Alan and Unwin, so thank you very much to them. This is a recent release that came out on the 29th of August and it is set in rural Southern China in the early 1950s. Well that's where the story starts. It does progress a few years through history. In this story we are following Fu and Pei who are brother and sister. They are living with their mother in a small rural town in Southern China. They are enduring famine conditions. Their father has left sometime after Pei's birth and we find out that he has gone to Australia. He was brought over there by someone who knew him and he has been trying to find a way to build up money and to bring his family over to Australia with him. But of course that has left Fu and Pei and their mother in this town going through some really harsh conditions and then of course this becomes even worse with the Great Leap Forward which brings with it some economic disaster and leads to the death of many families, children, etc. And Fu and Pei find themselves faced with disaster and they have to flee their village lest Fu be put to work and Pei be married off. She's not even a teenager yet and so they make their escape with the help of an unlikely assistant who then sets them on the right path to trying to be able to find their way back to their father. This means that they need to go to Hong Kong. They need to be able to get papers to travel to Australia because the immigration policy back then was atrocious unsurprisingly and it is their journey from this small rural town the only life that they've known. All they have of their father is a menu from the restaurant where he works and his name and a photo and they need to use that to try and help them find their way back to him. There are so many really wonderful side characters in here who help Fu and Pei and their journey is perilous but it is also hopeful. This is a story about courage, it is about determination, it is about being willing to stand up for yourself and hope that you can get to where you need to be. There is a really wonderful authors note at the back of this book from Rebecca Lim about the research that she's done and about this part of history which I didn't know all that much about and so I was learning quite a lot as I was reading the book and sort of reading up on more information about the Great Leap Forward and what happened around that time but the authors note does go into some information about that so if you were reading this with middle grade with a middle grade reader there is a lot of information in there that can support them in understanding this part of history and what exactly was going on at the time and why Rebecca Lim has made the choices that she's made in the story. Obviously this is quite a hopeful story and Fu and Pei do arrive in Australia and it is successful in that way and it was not like that for many many others but as a way of being able to help people understand this part of the world's history and particularly in Australia's immigration history journey as well I think it's a really wonderful read, the characters are wonderful. Rebecca Lim's writing is always great, I've always enjoyed her writing style and this was no exception. I will leave a link to where you can find out more information about the book as well as Rebecca Lim down below. In the comments I'd love to know if you have read this or if you've read any of Rebecca Lim's other books feel free to chat to me about them down below. If you'd like to let me know that you're here but you don't want to leave a comment feel free to leave a boat emoji down below otherwise I hope that wherever you're on the world you're staying safe and healthy and I will see you in my next video. Thanks so much for watching, bye everyone.