Kira-Kira is a Newbery Medal winning novel by Cynthia Kadohata. Although Kadohata had previously written other books, Kira-Kira was the first one she wrote for younger audiences.
It wasn’t easy being Japanese and living in America in the 1950s. Katie lives in a small rented house in Iowa with her parents and older sister (and best friend), Lynn. After their Oriental food store goes out of business, the family relocates to Georgia, where her parents find work in the poultry industry. Life is hard. The parents work around the clock under deplorable working conditions in a company owned by the extremely wealthy, powerful, and tyrannical Mr. Lyndon. Katie’s mother wears special pads to work that are designed for urine breakthroughs, because the company doesn’t allow unscheduled bathroom breaks. Her father’s working hours are so long that he often sleeps at the hatchery during the few hours he has between shifts. The mother has another baby, but when babysitting stops being available, Katie and her baby brother sit in their hot car during her mother’s long shifts because they have no place to go and are not allowed in or near the building. They rent a small, cramped apartment and struggle to make ends meet. They are shunned in their community for the work they do and for being Japanese, however, they are an extremely loving and close-knit family. Despite their many hardships, they have each other. Katie and her sister, Lynn, share an unbreakable bond. Lynn teaches Katie about everything under the sun, including the word kira-kira, which means glittering. This becomes Katie’s favorite word and she uses it to describe everything she sees, from butterflies to Kleenex. Lynn teaches Katie to focus on the future, which she promises will be brighter because she is saving to purchase a house for the family. But then, the unthinkable happens. A horrible diagnoses changes everything, and their already difficult lives shatter.
Narrated in Katie’s optimistic voice, Kira-Kira is a story of love, family bonds, loss, and survival. It is a story of racial prejudice, clashing cultures, schoolyard cruelties, the sting of middle school social ranking, and the ever-present line in the sand between the haves and the have-nots. Kadohata interweaves each and every one of these themes into a novel that is a gripping, honest portrayal of life in the deep, rural south during the 1950s. We see a family of undeniable integrity struggling to make it while enduring brutal treatment, followed by an unimaginable tragedy. We see the core of human emotions and vulnerabilities, and the strength to endure and survive.
The family characters in this novel were likable and relatable. The parents were hard-working, honest people who deeply loved and cared about their family. I especially enjoyed the close sisterly relationship between Katie and Lynn. Lynn was the responsible, studious older sister who was always protecting Katie, and guiding her through their world with kindness, time, patience and support. Then there was Katie, the sweet but not so serious little sister. Katie was smart, but unconcerned about grades, had a tendency to be impulsive, and got herself into trouble at times. Yet, she was quite lovable and had an endearing innocence about her, and I loved how Kadohata found ways to insert humor into her dialogs:
Lynn was the bravest girl in the world. She was also a genius. I know this because one day, I asked her, “Are you a genius?” And she said, “Yes.”
As time went on, I enjoyed seeing Katie’s character evolve and mature throughout the book in a coming of age sort of way, and these transitions flowed beautifully. It was easy to become engrossed in this novel. I felt deeply for the characters, and shared their wide range of emotions – anger, sadness, humor, grief, admiration. For young readers navigating the social scene at school, I think this novel is highly relatable as it clearly demonstrates the pain of social hierarchy during this vulnerable stage in life. Kira-Kira is well written, educational and offers a vivid, poignant look at the human spirit and what we will do for those we love. I highly recommend this historical fiction novel for tween and teen readers.
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Since the publication of Kira-Kira, Cynthia Katohata has written several additional books for young readers that focus on the struggle of Japanese-Americans. If you enjoy Kira-Kira, then I highly recommend The Weedflower, a novel about a young Japanese-American girl living in an internment camp. See my review for Weedflower here.
It doesn’t matter who you are, where you come from. The ability to triumph begins with you – always. — Oprah Winfrey
Prologue for The Wrecking Storm:
Author Michael Ward contacted me and requested an honest review of his novel, Rags of Time. As a lover of historical fiction and murder mysteries, I was delighted to do so as this novel offers the best of both worlds. I hope you all enjoy my review, and I thank Michael Ward for the opportunity.
THE KING’S ANATOMIST: THE JOURNEY OF ANDREAS VESALIUS BY RON BLUMENFELD
Ron Blumenfeld is a retired pediatrician and health care executive. Ron grew up in the Bronx, New York in the shadow of Yankee Stadium and studied at City College of New York before receiving his MD degree from the SUNY Downstate Health Sciences Center. After completing his pediatrics residency at the University of Arizona, he and his family settled in Connecticut, but Tucson remains their second home. Upon retirement, he became a columnist for his town’s newspaper, a pleasure he surrendered to concentrate on his debut novel, The King’s Anatomist (October 12, 2021). Ron’s love of books springs from his childhood years spent in an antiquarian book store in Manhattan, where his mother was the only employee. He enjoys a variety of outdoor sports and hiking. He and his wife Selina currently reside in Connecticut and are fortunate to have their son Daniel and granddaughter Gracelynn nearby.
ONE NIGHT WITH AN EARL BY TINA GABRIELLE
About the Author
We are all familiar with Charles Dickens’ holiday classic, A Christmas Carol. How can we ever forget the gruff and stingy businessman, Ebenezer Scrooge? Or Jacob Marley, his equally stingy business partner? How about Bob Cratchit, Ebenezer’s overworked, underpaid clerk? Do you recall Belle Endicott, the beautiful woman who broke Ebenezer’s heart years earlier? In The Red Button, Keith Eldred gives us the engaging backstory of A Christmas Carol, and he lays an intriguing foundation of how these relationships began and later evolved. In this prelude, we meet Bob Cratchit as a child; a bright, mathematically inclined young boy who was full of potential but destined to be forever bound by the inescapable trappings of poverty. We are introduced to Jacob Marley, the formation of their greedy partnership, as well as the influence he had over Scrooge. But it is Ebenezer’s complicated relationship with Belle that takes center stage in this novel. Eldred provides the heartfelt history of their love story, detailing how they came together, their courtship, engagement, and later breakup – a painful blow from which Ebenezer never, ever recovered.
The novel opens with aristocratic Eleonora Fonseca Pimentel pleading with the High Court of Naples to be beheaded instead of hanged like a criminal. One of the leading revolutionaries of her time, Eleonora contributed to the establishment of the Neapolitan Republic, based on the ideals of the French Revolution. Imprisoned in 1799 after the return of the Bourbon Monarchy – due to her work as editor-in-chief of Il Monitore Napoletano – and while waiting to be sentenced, she writes a memoir. Here, she discusses not only her revolutionary enthusiasm, but also the adolescent lover who abandoned her, Joseph Correia da Serra.
Julieta Almeida Rodrigues is a writer, professor, scholar, and interpreter. Born and raised in Portugal, she earned a Ph.D. at Columbia University. She is the author of two collections of short fiction, The Rogue and Other Portuguese Stories and On the Way to Red Square. The latter is a fictionalized account of her life in the diplomatic circles of Moscow in the 1980s (New Academia Publishing, Washington DC). She published a narrative work about Sintra, Portugal, entitled Hora Crepuscular/Drawing Dusk/La Hora Crepuscular (Agir, Execução Gráfica). She is a member of the Pen Club of Portugal, the Fulbright Commission Team of Evaluators in Portugal (2014 Prize for International Cooperation, the Prince of Asturias Foundation), and of CLEPUL, Center for Lusophone and European Literatures and Cultures, Faculty of Humanities, the University of Lisbon. She has taught at the University of Lisbon and at Georgetown University, and has been a Visiting Scholar at the New School (twice). She has spoken at the Foreign Service Institute, U.S. Department of State, The Chawton House Library in the United Kingdom, The International Conference on the Short Story, The American Portuguese Studies Association, and the Historical Writers of America, among other locations. She is a member of the Steering Committee of the Historical Novel Society New York City Chapter and runs, with a colleague, its Guest Speaker Program at the Jefferson Market Library. She divides her time between Manhattan and Sintra, Portugal.
Publication Date: September 21, 2021
Susanne Dunlap is the author of ten works of historical fiction. A graduate of Smith College with a PhD in Music History from Yale University, Susanne grew up in Buffalo, New York and has lived in London, Brooklyn and Northampton, MA. She now lives in Northampton with her long-time partner, Charles, has two grown daughters, three granddaughters, a grandson, a stepson and a stepdaughter, five step-grandsons and one step-granddaughter—that’s a total of four children and eleven grandchildren!
JALOPY
Had Anna been allowed to choose, she’d have become a