Weedflower

The author has presented an actual historical account of how Japanese Americans were ill treated during World War II. By using characters such as Sumiko, the reader is taken on a journey through the eyes of an eleven-year old girl whose family was sent to live in a "Relocation Center." We see the pride, humiliation, and courage the Japanese Americans endured. This would be an excellent book to share with upper elementary and middle school students!

I "read" this book on CDs in the car and loved it. Ordered it for my grandkids, 8 and 10, and for friends of Japanese descent! Highly recommended as an important bit of history most Americans know little about!

Cynthia Kadohata's first novel, Kira-Kira, was an impressive book. And Weedflower is equally impressive. This time the novel is set in the Southwest before and during World War II. Sumiko is a typically happy twelve-year old. While she feels awkward that she's the only Japanese-American in her class at school, she has not yet felt the harsh stings of discrimination...until a vicious birthday party. Soon after, I believe the same weekend, Pearl Harbor is bombed. Her normal life vanishes, no more school...no more social life...only fear and anxiety as they wait to see what will become of them all. It is a very heart-felt story of one girl's experiences in a Japanese-American internment camp. Definitely recommend it to everyone!

"Weedflower" is the moving story of Japanese-Americans during WWII - - especially appropriate when the fragility of human rights is being demonstrated during yet another war. Sixth-grader Sumiko and her young brother Tak Tak were taken in by close relatives following the death of parents. Sumiko finds healing through hard work & dreams of someday owning a flower shop. Their life is one of few surprises, with strict adherence to the family regimen but Sumiko is crushed by rejection from the mother of a white schoolgirl who had invited her to a birthday party. Then follows the unthinkable blow of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor and the evacuation of "Nikkei" (Nisei) to detention centers. An important part of the book for me is what was NOT discussed; the curtain of dust in the desert is described in vivid detail so that readers will almost taste that suffocating bitterness. But Cynthia Kadohata does not mention the comfortable "others" shielded by a curtain of censorship employed by our government. It lowered this curtain separating those secure in their rights from those who couldn't know whether their rights would ever again be respected. Curtained by dust and detention the Nisei agonized to make their lives orderly once more. Kadohata writes about the details of everyday life: in southern California where the flower farm was diligently tended & family standards adhered to /AND/ in the Camp built for detainees on a Mohave Indian reservation where the rigid family structure fell apart as goals were abandoned and purpose for living so deeply shaken. Recollecting the days after Pearl Harbor I am surprised by the perception that the Quakers (Religious Society of Friends) were the only group expressing shock and concern. There is an unsettling similarity in the treatment of the Japanese-Americans and conscientious objectors during WWII, although even less has been written about the latter. I have experienced a few years of primitive living conditions but never racial discrimination and total disruption. Sumiko feels that those (Issei) not born in America & imprisoned in North Dakota "would die of cold and she would die of heat" in Arizona. "And then, she believed, the rest of America would be satisfied." But Sumiko was better prepared for the ordeal than some because "her whole life.....had been a lesson in how to change your lot by accepting it and learning from it." The Native Americans did not welcome the Camp on their reservation but they eventually benefited from the fact that the Nisei were better treated by the government! There were many tensions among detainees that would not have occurred to me; these are described with great sensitivity by the author. The government's pressure on the Nisei to "support the war effort" by taking jobs 'outside' and the pressure exerted on men to join the military seem the ultimate ironies. Whatever our ages, we will learn much from this book about the elements of Camp life, the despera

Full-disclosure time. I did not like "Kira-Kira". I respected what author Cynthia Kadohata was trying to do and I understood where she was trying to take her book but I did not respect how she did it. So when a co-worker I trust handed me, "Weedflower" and said, "It's actually good", I eyed the title with a critical eye. It takes a very extraordinary book to lift me out of my own personal prejudices and win me BACK over to a writer. That said, it seems that Kadohata has written such a book. Insightful, intelligent, historically accurate, and chock full of well-timed and well-written little tidbits, I've not found myself wanting to keep reading and reading a children's book this good in quite some time. Undoubtedly one of this year's rare can't-miss titles. Sumiko is just thrilled. She's just been invited to her very first birthday party with all the other children in her class. Though she lives in California on her aunt and uncle's flower farm, Sumiko doesn't know a lot of other Japanese-American children at her school. When she arrives at the party, however, the mother of the birthday girl turns her away from the house. Not long after this humiliating incident, Pearl Harbor is bombed. Now Sumiko and her family members are getting shipped off to an internment camp for the duration of the war. They eventually find themselves in one located on an Indian Reservation in Arizona. The Japanese-Americans don't want to be there and the Indians don't want them. Still, while fighting boredom and the apparent death of her dreams, Sumiko is able to meet one of the Mohave boys that make deliveries to the camp and strike up a tentative friendship. Dealing with issues as heavy as how to survive without your basic Civil Rights and balancing them with stories of growth, mischief, and frustration, Kadohata intricately weaves together multiple strands of narrative and story to serve up a tale that is wholly new and engaging. Flower farmers don't get much play in kids' books. Ditto Japanese internment titles that discuss the Poston internment camp. On the bookflap we learn that Kadohata's father was held at Poston during WWII and that his experiences provided the impetus for this book. Most remarkable is how deftly Kadohata is able to give her characters three-dimensions while still filling in just enough story, facts, and background to provide for a well-rounded novel. Though it slows down a little at the beginning, "Weedflower" hits the ground running once Sumiko finds herself turned away from the birthday party. That small piece of foreshadowing is such a wonderful little way to begin the book with a feeling for things to come that you almost wonder if it happened to someone Kadohata or her father knew. Of course the really remarkable thing about "Weedflower" is that you feel the threat the Japanese-Americans were under without ever having to see violent or particularly nasty scenes. It's the mark of a good children's writer when the au