The Child Who Raised Poisonous Snakes by Can Xue

Can Xue is a Chinese author that was born in 1953, she was brought up by her grandmother who had some strange habits. Can Xue's life was rather unusual and her life experiences give her interesting things to write about.

This story was about a boy, Sha-yuan, and his mother and father. Sha-yuan is a very interesting child who often escapes the house to go find poisonous snakes. The parents become very concerned about him, because he always comes home with bite marks all over him, so they decide to keep and eye on him at all times. Sha-yuan tells his parents that they are wasting their time keeping an eye on him at all times because the snakes are everywhere, he claims they are scattered all throughout the house. The boy later says that a lot of snakes live in his stomach, and once he threw up and blamed it on the snakes. The boy says that he collects snakes so that they don't feel lonely. The parents think that their son is very odd, and don't really understand what to do with him. When he returns from running off a few days before, the parents claim they don't really think that he is their son, and that they have no proof that he ever exisited. The mother also claims that she has no idea where his name came from.

I enjoyed this story because it was a easy read, and it was easy to understand. But I also thought that this story was very strange. It was odd how the child claims to have snakes living in his stomach and they seem to be eating away at him because he slowly is getting thinner and thinner. Also, I thought that the ending was strange when the parents were confused as to wether the boy was actually theirs or not, and how they don't even have any evidence as to wether he exisited or not. But, overall I thought it was an interesting story.