Bound To Stay Bound

School Library Journal - 03/01/2022 Gr 2–4—This staid picture book biography chronicles the life of stunt man and movie star Jackie Chan. Young Jackie practiced kung fu each morning with his father, but he was initially not a dedicated student, growing up as the class goofball and resistant to anything requiring discipline. His parents moved to Australia in the hope of building a better life, while Jackie stayed behind at the China Drama Academy to train for the opera, where he was a student for 10 years focusing on acting, fighting, and acrobatics. This period in his life instilled him with perseverance and dedication to his craft. As the opera lost popularity in China, Jackie found work as a martial arts stunt man. The text, covering a lot very quickly, is accompanied by watercolor illustrations in a calm palette of greens and yellows. Any questions readers have about the difficult periods in Jackie's life, such as the separation from his family, are likely to be answered in the more detailed author's note in the back matter, which also includes a thoughtful glossary of Chinese characters with phonetic Mandarin and Cantonese pronunciations. VERDICT This should find a home in many larger biography collections.—Lauren Younger - Copyright 2022 Publishers Weekly, Library Journal and/or School Library Journal used with permission.

Booklist - 04/15/2022 More tribute than biography, this profile of the master of martial arts comedy emphasizes salient character traits, such as defending the weak or being true to oneself, over recitations of specific facts. Still, in tracing the future film star’s “poor but happy” early years, his training in martial and dramatic arts at the China Drama Academy, and his progress from “rough-and-tumble” stunt double in Hong Kong cinema to leading man, Giang tells a lively tale that nods to important influences (Buster Keaton, Fred Astaire) and features onomatopoeic interjections (POW! BAM! OW!). Chau adds Chinese characters (translated into English and transliterated into Mandarin and Cantonese in the back matter) to many of her action-oriented scenes, and other than one disturbing incident of a schoolmaster beating the young pupil with a stick, offers a stimulating mix of figures in martial arts poses, elaborate Chinese opera costumes, and exciting stunts. The story goes only to Chan's breakthrough hit, Snake in the Eagle’s Shadow (1978), but the back matter contains an afterword and a list of biographies for older readers. - Copyright 2022 Booklist.