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The Scratch on the Ming Vase
An attack on her kung-fu master leads a budding spy on a mysterious adventure
Born in China, Nicki Haddon was adopted by a wealthy North American family as a baby. Now sixteen, she has a talent for kung fu beyond her years, a fierce independent streak, and a growing curiosity about her birth family.
Nicki is all set to train at the Fire Dragon Academy with David Kahana, a kung fu grand master, but when she reports to the studio to find him stabbed and lying in a pool of blood. As he lapses into a coma, he begs her to find a priceless Ming dynasty vase that once belonged to Pu Yi, the Boy Emperor.
Over seven days of danger and deception, Nicki will rely on her wits, her martial arts training, and some unexpected allies – including Fenwick, the family butler – to uncover the criminal mastermind behind the plot to steal the vase.
A Nicki Haddon Mystery.
Born in China, Nicki Haddon was adopted by a wealthy North American family as a baby. Now sixteen, she has a talent for kung fu beyond her years, a fierce independent streak, and a growing curiosity about her birth family.
Nicki is all set to train at the Fire Dragon Academy with David Kahana, a kung fu grand master, but when she reports to the studio to find him stabbed and lying in a pool of blood. As he lapses into a coma, he begs her to find a priceless Ming dynasty vase that once belonged to Pu Yi, the Boy Emperor.
Over seven days of danger and deception, Nicki will rely on her wits, her martial arts training, and some unexpected allies – including Fenwick, the family butler – to uncover the criminal mastermind behind the plot to steal the vase.
A Nicki Haddon Mystery.
164 pages, Paperback
First published September 15, 2012
1 person is currently reading
33 people want to read
About the author
Caroline Stellings
20 books22 followersCaroline Stellings is an award-winning author and illustrator of numerous books for children and young adults. She has received many honours for her work, including nominations for both the Geoffrey Bilson Award and the Hackmatack Children’s Choice Book Award, and she has won both the ForeWord Book of the Year and the Hamilton Literary Award. Her picture book Gypsy’s Fortune (Peanut Butter Press) was chosen as a Best Bet by the Ontario Library Association. Caroline has a Masters degree from McMaster University. She lives in Waterdown, Ontario.
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Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
December 23, 2015
So... It was okay... I think. It lacked a lot of things though :| Review will be up tomorrow!
Thank you netgalley for providing me a copy in exchange of a honest review!
Actual rating is 2.5/5 stars
I went into this book thinking it was going to be a nice, funny and light book. Not that I was wrong. Was it nice? Hmm, yeah. Funny? Not really. Light? Yes it was. The thing is, this book had one of the lowest character development I had ever read. The plot? Well, it's good. Girl is a kung-fu champion. She finds her master in a critical state and decided to uncover the mystery of the ming vase. Great. This would have worked better if the MC, first, talked like someone who was actually 16 and second, stopped thinking she could do everything on her own. The thing is, everyone thinks it's okay! She looks like a tween and goes to ask for a job at a hotel? Acceptable!
And that's not even all of it! By the end, girl says she had an almost boyfriend. Excuse me? Where was it? Have I missed something? I am very sorry, but nowhere has it shown that you actually considered him to be... something more than a friend. Do I need to remind you that you were running around trying to find a vase? Also, you just talk to some people, and now they're your best friends? Wow, that's innocent. Maybe I am too harsh. Maybe this book is meant for a younger audience. But it wasn't very realistic.
The sequel is a bit better in terms of writing and characters, especially in terms of plot, but again I feel like the characters are too flat and the book is here only for the plot and not for any sort of real and genuine relationship to form between characters.
On the overall, yes it was a quick read, but it lacked some authenticity to it.
Thank you netgalley for providing me a copy in exchange of a honest review!
Actual rating is 2.5/5 stars
I went into this book thinking it was going to be a nice, funny and light book. Not that I was wrong. Was it nice? Hmm, yeah. Funny? Not really. Light? Yes it was. The thing is, this book had one of the lowest character development I had ever read. The plot? Well, it's good. Girl is a kung-fu champion. She finds her master in a critical state and decided to uncover the mystery of the ming vase. Great. This would have worked better if the MC, first, talked like someone who was actually 16 and second, stopped thinking she could do everything on her own. The thing is, everyone thinks it's okay! She looks like a tween and goes to ask for a job at a hotel? Acceptable!
And that's not even all of it! By the end, girl says she had an almost boyfriend. Excuse me? Where was it? Have I missed something? I am very sorry, but nowhere has it shown that you actually considered him to be... something more than a friend. Do I need to remind you that you were running around trying to find a vase? Also, you just talk to some people, and now they're your best friends? Wow, that's innocent. Maybe I am too harsh. Maybe this book is meant for a younger audience. But it wasn't very realistic.
The sequel is a bit better in terms of writing and characters, especially in terms of plot, but again I feel like the characters are too flat and the book is here only for the plot and not for any sort of real and genuine relationship to form between characters.
On the overall, yes it was a quick read, but it lacked some authenticity to it.
December 22, 2015
It's too bad that the book is being reviewed by some as a Young Adult book. My sister is a friend of the author and I know as a fact that she wrote it for a middle-grade audience, ages 8 to 11. What I really liked about this story was the idea behind the scratch in the Ming vase as being a mark of its authenticity, and the Chinese history, and Hawaii. (Sun Yat Sen,etc.) What my sister liked about it was the fact that it was the first book her daughter has managed to finish in a long time. The action held her interest. A great story!
October 10, 2018
I personally thought that the book "The Scratch on the Ming Vase" was an okay read. I really like mysteries, but this one didn't really get my attention.
December 21, 2015
I would give this one star, but in the spirit of fairness, Stellings did do her research, she’s just a bad writer.
For the amount of plot that’s shoved into the novel, it’s absurdly short––164 pages, which is hardly enough time to get your bearings in a mystery that deals with international spy rings, gambling, suicide, attempted murder (like, twice), school dances, martial arts, and identity crises. None of the characters felt developed, none of the interactions felt natural. And friend! I spend my days reading from the slush pile at literary agencies, which has given me a really warped sense of what good writing is! In that my standards have been pulled so significantly downwards that I don’t trust myself to know what good writing is anymore! And this is still bad writing!
Like––action books don’t have to be over quicker than a teenage boy in the back of his mom’s car on prom night for them to feel like pageturners or capture your attention! I’d advise expanding on the characterisation but also I just don’t know if they––as characters flatter than my hair right now––could support it! I mean, let’s talk about the fact that literally the only thing noteworthy about her bland love interest is that he’s an Aisin Gioro. (White people are fucking weird about the Aisin Gioro. Like…y’all realise you contributed to their fall, right? Yuanmingyuan didn’t burn itself, Eight Nation Alliance. Like at least when Sun Yat-sen and his rebels toppled the regime it was after 2000 years of imperial feudalism and 300 years of ethnic oppression.) And for all this book harps on about the Ming Vase being brought out of China (from those scary scary Commies! Unlike our good guys, A LITERAL IMPERIAL CLAN) by an Aisin Gioro, the majority of shit carted out of China during the Qing Dynasty, the majority of the artifacts plundered from the Aisin Gioro, was carted out by the Eight Nation Alliance.
Like? The author inserts herself into so many conversations she doesn’t belong in and makes value judgements based off these really unnuanced understandings of 20th century Chinese politics and history, and it was a really uncomfortable experience for me, Actual Chinese Person™. But even if it wasn’t so messy and weird vis-a-vis messy navigation through messy identities, it’s like, objectively not a good book? Despite the fact that the novel deals with things like gambling addiction and attempted suicide, and despite the fact that Nicki is ostensibly in her upper teens, the book is written in such a juvenile way that when I picked it up I assumed it was middle grade.
None of it works. The plot points felt like they existed out of a need to move the larger plot along, and nothing about the book was organic. I always feel really bad giving bad reviews to books I got for free but man, don’t waste your time with this. Spend it on something more fruitful. Read The Paper Menagerie or something.
For the amount of plot that’s shoved into the novel, it’s absurdly short––164 pages, which is hardly enough time to get your bearings in a mystery that deals with international spy rings, gambling, suicide, attempted murder (like, twice), school dances, martial arts, and identity crises. None of the characters felt developed, none of the interactions felt natural. And friend! I spend my days reading from the slush pile at literary agencies, which has given me a really warped sense of what good writing is! In that my standards have been pulled so significantly downwards that I don’t trust myself to know what good writing is anymore! And this is still bad writing!
Like––action books don’t have to be over quicker than a teenage boy in the back of his mom’s car on prom night for them to feel like pageturners or capture your attention! I’d advise expanding on the characterisation but also I just don’t know if they––as characters flatter than my hair right now––could support it! I mean, let’s talk about the fact that literally the only thing noteworthy about her bland love interest is that he’s an Aisin Gioro. (White people are fucking weird about the Aisin Gioro. Like…y’all realise you contributed to their fall, right? Yuanmingyuan didn’t burn itself, Eight Nation Alliance. Like at least when Sun Yat-sen and his rebels toppled the regime it was after 2000 years of imperial feudalism and 300 years of ethnic oppression.) And for all this book harps on about the Ming Vase being brought out of China (from those scary scary Commies! Unlike our good guys, A LITERAL IMPERIAL CLAN) by an Aisin Gioro, the majority of shit carted out of China during the Qing Dynasty, the majority of the artifacts plundered from the Aisin Gioro, was carted out by the Eight Nation Alliance.
Like? The author inserts herself into so many conversations she doesn’t belong in and makes value judgements based off these really unnuanced understandings of 20th century Chinese politics and history, and it was a really uncomfortable experience for me, Actual Chinese Person™. But even if it wasn’t so messy and weird vis-a-vis messy navigation through messy identities, it’s like, objectively not a good book? Despite the fact that the novel deals with things like gambling addiction and attempted suicide, and despite the fact that Nicki is ostensibly in her upper teens, the book is written in such a juvenile way that when I picked it up I assumed it was middle grade.
None of it works. The plot points felt like they existed out of a need to move the larger plot along, and nothing about the book was organic. I always feel really bad giving bad reviews to books I got for free but man, don’t waste your time with this. Spend it on something more fruitful. Read The Paper Menagerie or something.
April 17, 2013
I bought this last fall after the 'Dewey Divas' gave a presentation to our librarian group about new & hot books. This one was disappointing: it's OK, a quick light read, fast-paced, deals with online gambling addiction [increasingly problematic for teens these days], and I liked the setting in Toronto. However, the characters aren't developed much and the situation doesn't seem believable. Although the author does build an interesting mystery, and even tries to connect some century-old happenings, it's hard to care much about what happens. Two days since I read it, and I really don't remember much of it.
November 25, 2015
This book packs a whole lotta plot and not much character development into it. Nicki was abandoned by her parents as a child and adopted and raised by a wealthy couple. She’s taking martial arts from a master and also searching for her birth parents.
In this mystery, Nicki refers to herself by a different name, meets tons of new people, solves a mystery and is recruited by a spy agency. It’s a whirlwind that doesn’t work. The abundance of characters are not well developed, the plot has so many side stories (gambling addiction, suicide attempts) that it feels like the author couldn’t fully flesh out one solid plot.
In this mystery, Nicki refers to herself by a different name, meets tons of new people, solves a mystery and is recruited by a spy agency. It’s a whirlwind that doesn’t work. The abundance of characters are not well developed, the plot has so many side stories (gambling addiction, suicide attempts) that it feels like the author couldn’t fully flesh out one solid plot.
December 22, 2015
Both this title and its sequel, The Secret of the Golden Flower, were chosen by the Canadian Children's Book Centre for its "Best Books for Kids and Teens" in the category of Junior Fiction, not Young Adult. Stellings has won awards for her fiction in both categories, so it is unfortunate that these mysteries are being reviewed as Young Adult fiction when they are intended for middle grade readers.
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews