BOOK REVIEWS

By Theodora Lau

HarperResource, a Division of HarperCollins Publishers, 2002

Paperback, $14.95, 214 pages

By Polo

In the year 2000, HarperCollins published its fourth edition of Shanghai-born author Theodora Lau’s The Handbook of Chinese Horoscopes. It was the text’s twentieth anniversary, establishing without equal, Madam Lau’s authority in her field.

Over one million copies of The Handbook have been sold in seventeen languages. The esteemed author has been credited for systemizing, indeed creating and developing the "Sixty Personalities," and the "144 Marriage Combinations" generally utilized by contemporary Chinese astrologers in understanding individuals and predicting relationships.

Children of the Moon is the author’s latest effort to put her tried and true assessment tool toward a better understanding of our children. In her forward, Madam Lau tells parents the primary purpose of her new book "is to focus on understanding the yet undeveloped personality and potential of each child. It is a profound honor, joy, and responsibility," the author continues, "to nurture and raise a child, and it is my hope that Chinese horoscopes will provide new insights into such an important understanding. Once we are able to understand and appreciate a child’s personality, it becomes much easier to guide and work with that particular child."

Each of Madam Lau’s chapters corresponds to one of the Chinese zodiac’s twelve animal signs. She further divides each chapter into seven sections: assigning each lunar animal sign; describing each animal’s zodiac branch; setting out each sign’s personality traits or predispositions; discussing the relevance of birth order and sibling relations; the influence of birth hour; famous persons born under that lunar sign; and finally Madam Lau’s updated Chinese legends about each zodiac animal.

Like the ancient and elegant system of knowledge and social organization out of which the Chinese zodiac tradition developed, Children of the Moon affirms our place as participants in a grand system of bodies in perpetual motion, all of us guided by enduring and reassuring universal principles. Naturally, right after unwrapping Madam Lau’s book, I went straight to each of our children’s astrological signs. Just as naturally, I was delighted by her system’s insights and assessments. I only wished I had had it in my hands twenty years earlier. I may have been a more efficient parent — stars are stubborn, personalities are persistent.

 

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