Winnie Zeng Unleashes a Legend by Katie Zhao is a fun-filled, adventure ride that dips into Chinese mythology. Winnie is just beginning middle school and has a lot on her plate. She takes piano competitively, is at the top of her class, and attends Chinese school. Her nemesis in all of this is a boy named David, who often narrowly beats her in all these competitions. and against whom her parents are constantly comparing her to. While baking some mooncakes for a bake sale, Winnie unleashes the spirit of her grandmother and learns she is a shaman. Of course, she learns that David is a shaman too, and is better at it than she is. While she is initially resistant to accepting these shaman responsibilities and struggles with balancing it all, she eventually embraces being a shaman. Thanks to NetGalley for an eARC of this book.

This is a cute and clever, middle grade, ghost story. Quick, easy read. The plot moved along smoothly. It hooks you in and keeps you turning the pages. The characters were well-defined and fun. I love how the book incorporated classic Chinese mythology with modern day America.

Zhao does a great job of promoting diversity. Her whimsical, upbeat book highlights some of the difficulties that Asian Americans face when it comes to simultaneously preserving the culture of their ancestors while also trying to fit in with white America.

This is a fun, culturally significant book. Highly recommended.

A special thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for providing me with an advanced reader's copy of this book in exchange for my honest review.

A properly spectacular middle grade read featuring several intergenerational friendships, sibling relationships, enemies to friends all while Winnie adjusts to middle school! This was such a fun, realistic story and I loved reading it. Can't wait to order a copy for the library! Thanks to NetGalley and Random House for an early read in exchange for an honest review.

I finished reading “Winnie Zeng Unleashes a Legend” in one sitting, and it is one of the best book that I ever read. I enjoy reading about Winnie adventure as a shaman-in-training and , her relationship with her parents, sister, David, and her grandmother. My favorite part of the novel is learning about the Autumn Moon Festival and the Legend of Hou Yi. And as a Chinese American,, I can understand the struggles that Winnie goes through and hope for the best!

Winnie will make you laugh and cheer out loud as she saves the world with mooncakes. Super fun! Just make sure you finish your homework first because you aren’t going to want to put it down!

Winni Zeng Unleashes a Legend by Katie Zhao follows a young girl grappling with all that comes with starting middle school while also finding out she has secret shamanic powers tied to the spirit of her deceased grandmother. This book is fun, adventurous, and a great choice for middle-grade readers.

Winnie Zeng wants to make her parents proud and be the best in everything. In her quest to have the most successful bake sale, she comes across her grandmother's cookbook. She makes mooncakes and enters a world she never expected. Now, she must partner with her academic rival to fight spirits and protect her home.

What a treat! This book was so fun, while also touching on familial expectations. Winnie's relationships with her family are so well balanced with the more fantastical parts of the story, as does her desire to fit in in middle school. The story is fast paced, with well developed characters. A definite must have in libraries.

Thank you NetGalley for allowing me to read this book in exchange for an honest review.

Go Winnie! I love to see middle grades books with strong female characters who step up to save the day. Winnie is a 6th grader of Chinese heritage in Michigan who is simply trying to survive middle school. She struggles with pressure "to be perfect" from her parents, and the peer pressure to fit in with a group of American teens. Her arch enemy, David, who always outperforms Winnie in piano and Chinese transfers to her middle school to add to her already bad first week. In an attempt to win the bake sale competition between the 6th grade classes, Winnie decided to make her Grandmother's mooncakes, only to release the spirit of her dead Grandmother. Winnie must learn to work with her Grandmother's spirit in order to save the town.

I fully enjoyed this story, and can't wait for the others in the series.

Winnie Zeng Unleashes a Legend, overall is a great story. The reason it loses a star in my rating is that I found the beginning to have so many brand name items mentioned that I felt like the story was originally planned as a television show with commercials. Once I got past the beginning, I loved the story and the connection to Chinese mythology.
I also feel the story accurately deals with the pressures on high achievers in school and showing competition between parents of those children. It also shows the main character dealing with bullying by the "popular" crowd.
Although the perspective is from the perspective of a Chinese American family, the pressure to be the best will be understood by all children who find themselves competing scholastically or coming from families who do not conform to the norms of an American middle school.

I love it when one book I’ve read leads to me understanding what is going on in another one.

In this case, having read “Daughter of the Moon Goddess” has led me to getting what is going on in Winnie Zeng unleashes a legend.

The Mid-Autumn Moon Festival is in honor of Moon Goddess, Chang’e, who was married to the archer Hou Yi.

Winnie decides that her classmates will love to eat mooncakes, which is one of the delicacies of the festival, so she finds her Lao Lao’s (her grandmother) cookbook, and cooks them following those directions. Up until this point, the book appears to be about how hard middle school is when you don’t fit in.

But, upon making the moon cakes, she calls up the spirit of her dead Lao Lao and learns that she is a shaman, and has magical powers she needs to cultivate to fight evil spirits.

What I loved about this book is that it remains a book about how hard it is to fit into middle school, despite all the magic that happens. That she has to balance saving her town with getting ready for her piano recital so she doesn’t disappoint her mother.

It remains totally relatable to readers, while having the magic happening around them.


<em>Thanks to Netgalley for making this book available for an honest review.</em>

This was a great middle grade fantasy! I loved how Zhao turned a very real experience for middle schoolers (shame about their culture's food because kids bully them) into Winnie having to confront that and embrace her culture to gain her powers.