PICTURE BOOK - Write to Me: Letters from Japanese American Children to the Librarian They Left Behind by Cynthia Grady

Illustrated by Amiko Hirao

2018, Charlesbridge Publishing

HC $16.99

32 pgs.

Goodreads rating:  4.29 - 92 ratings

My rating:  4.5

1^st line/s:  "Katherine Tasaki returned a stack of books and turned in her library card.  "We've go to move soon," she said.  "All Japanese, you know."

My comments:  The internment and mistreatment of Japanese Americans during WWII has always bewildered and incensed me.  This true story connects kids not only to this sad part of American History, but also highlights a brave American woman who did something to help alter a horrendous situation.

Goodreads  A touching story about Japanese American children who corresponded with their beloved librarian while they were imprisoned in World War II internment camps.
          When Executive Order 9066 is enacted after the attack at Pearl Harbor, children's librarian Clara Breed's young Japanese American patrons are to be sent to prison camp. Before they are moved, Breed asks the children to write her letters and gives them books to take with them. Through the three years of their internment, the children correspond with Miss Breed, sharing their stories, providing feedback on books, and creating a record of their experiences. Using excerpts from children's letters held at the Japanese American National Museum, author Cynthia Grady presents a difficult subject with honesty and hope.
          " A beautiful picture book for sharing and discussing with older children as well as the primary audience" -- Booklist STARRED REVIEW 
          "A touching tribute to a woman who deserves recognition" -- Kirkus Reviews
          "[An] affecting introduction to a distressing chapter in U.S. history and a brave librarian who inspired hope" -- Publisher's Weekly

43. The Buddha in the Attic - Julie Otsuka

audio read by Samantha Quan and Carrington MacDuffie

4 unabridged cds (4 hrs.)

2011, Random House Audio

144 pgs.

Adult Historical Fiction 

Finished 9/19/2013

Goodreads Rating: 3.55

My Rating: 2/ It was okay

TPPL

Setting: mid-California/San Francisco area from the 1920s to mid-1940

My comments:  I just can't consider this a novel - it's more like a very well-researched piece of nonfictiom presented in a way that people who don't really like nonfiction (me) can find it a little more palatable.  Immediately apparent is the use of "we" instead of "I," which took a bit of getting used to until you figured out she was never talking about one person, but a group of women who all had different experiences.  Beautiful writing, but it really got on my nerves after awhile. List after list after list... It was a decent way to get information about Japanese pre-war brides and a taste of what it might have been like to be sent to Japanese interment camps in the US, but I would have so much preferred individual stories of a handful of these woman.  I'm a story/plot/character person and although this was original and different, I can't, personally, recommend it as a piece of fiction....

Goodreads Review:  Julie Otsuka’s long-awaited follow-up to When the Emperor Was Divine is a tour de force of economy and precision, a novel that tells the story of a group of young women brought from Japan to San Francisco as “picture brides” nearly a century ago.

In eight incantatory sections, The Buddha in the Attic traces the picture brides’ extraordinary lives, from their arduous journey by boat, where they exchange photographs of their husbands, imagining uncertain futures in an unknown land; to their arrival in San Francisco and their tremulous first nights as new wives; to their backbreaking work picking fruit in the fields and scrubbing the floors of white women; to their struggles to master a new language and a new culture; to their experiences in childbirth, and then as mothers, raising children who will ultimately reject their heritage and their history; to the deracinating arrival of war.

5. Best Friends Forever - Beverly Patt

Illustrated by Shula Klinger
A World War II Scrapbook
Marshall Cavendish Children, 2010
$17.99 hc
92 pages
Rating: 5

This book is written as a journal/scrapbook by 14 year old Louise Margaret Krueger in 1942. Her best friend is Dottie Masuoka, and they live and go to school near Seattle. Their lives are forever changed when Dottie and her entire family are relocated to interment camps after the bombing by the Japanese at Pearl Harbor.

The diary includes letters from Dottie to Louise as well as newspaper articles about the bombing and coverage of the relocation. Therefore, it covers the feelings and sentiments of non-Japanese Americans who have Japanese American friends as well as insight from the interred Japanese Americans. We see and feel what it's like to be on the outside of the fence, as what it feels like to be on the inside. The housing is described really well, and the decline of Dottie's grandfather and his growing resentment of the U. S. government is powerful.

The book is well-written, interesting, fun to read, and filled with historic information. After visiting Manzanar last summer it was particularly poignant to read. There is a five-page afterward that includes oodles of information related to the historical background of the story.