Weedflower [Paperback]

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 author is able to convey danger without relying on shock or cheap theatrics. A true class act.

Not that Kadohata doesn't occasionally slip back into bad habits. The bulk of my dislike of "Kira-Kira" was based on the author's tendency to pile on the despair. Things get bad, and then the author will write a sentence or a paragraph that just milks the misery for all it's worth. As far as I could ascertain, that only happens once in this book. At one point Kadohata says, "Some nights Sumiko felt too sad to be inside listening to everyone breathe. Tak-Tak's nose was often stuffed, and Sumiko hated to listen to him struggle for freath. She imagined his lungs brown with dust. And Auntie was so depressed about Bull and Ichiro leaving that she cried for hours at night. Sumiko thought there was nothing in the world sadder than listening to someone cry for hours. It was even worse than your own tears". But such sections are few and far between. For the most part, Kadohata knows how to show and not tell. She's at her best when she makes it clear how the "ultimate boredom" a person can succumb to can kill your will to do anything. Idle hands are the devil's playthings indeed.

Actually, I've a bit of a beef with the cover. Sure, a shot of a pretty Japanese-American girl looking through barbed wire while wearing a kimono is a nice idea. But when on earth does Sumiko wear a kimono in this book? I remember that she owned one and that she pushed it to the back of the closet back in her California home but mostly when she wants to dress up she wears an increasingly bedraggled mint green school dress. Yet apparently the publisher didn't think a kid wearing anything less than a piece of symbolism would do. I would have much preferred to have seen Sumiko in normal school clothes, but there's no denying that while it may not be accurate, the cover of this book is rather stunning. A cheap shot, but stunning.

There are quite a few children's books that discuss the internments of WWII. The one that I kept thinking back to while reading this book was, "Invisible Thread" by Yoshiko Uchida. Uchida's book is based on memory and is good for what it is. It just so happens that Kadohata's book may be significantly more powerful in part because she doesn't have to adhere to her own memories and in part because the situation her father was in works so well in a children's book. A book published the same year as, "Weedflower" that also follows a forced internment at the hands of the U.S. Government is Joseph Bruchac's good but long, "Geronimo". Both books have a great deal in common, but Bruchac weighs down his narrative with too little editing whereas Kadohata keeps, "Weedflower" hopping along at a fast clip. I wish I could swamp "Weedflower" for "Kira-Kira" and make IT the Newbery winner of 2004. Ah well. As it stands, I recommend it to any and all kids forced by their schools to write a book report on a recent book of historical fiction. This is one of the more charming titles out there, and definitely will be making quite a few Best Book lists for 2006. Lovely lovely lovely.

For Sumiko, it all starts with the birthday party of one of her classmates. When she arrives at a party to which the entire class has been invited, she is quietly and firmly ejected for being Japanese.

"It's not me, dear," her classmate's mother says as she pushes Sumiko out the door, "but my husband has a few friends in back, some of the other parents who helped him raise some money for a charity we work with...." The possibility that the other parents might take offense to Sumiko being Japanese is enough for Sumiko to lose her invitation to the party. What she doesn't realize is that these attitudes shared by many of the hakujin (white people) are also enough for her to lose her home.

When the United States is attacked by Japan at Pearl Harbor, the government rounds up all the Niekki --- people of Japanese ancestry, including American-born citizens --- sending them to internment camps in the center of the country. Leaving behind their flower farm, their home, and most of their belongings, Sumiko and her family are shipped to a relocation center in the Sonoran desert.

There, amidst the grief and distress of an uprooted life, they do their best to rebuild their lives and form a community. For Sumiko this means planting a garden filled with the colorful and spicy-smelling weedflowers they farmed at home.

Cynthia Kadohata won a Newbery Award for KIRA-KIRA, her portrait of a family of Japanese factory workers living in Georgia after WWII. One of the most difficult challenges for any writer is following up on such a resounding success. A book on Japanese internment camps is a subject that will resonate with librarians and teachers, but what is uncertain is whether or not it will also appeal to young readers.

The author shows a deft touch in her handling of the material. She avoids sensationalism in the treatment of her characters and their experiences. Deprivation and violence aren't necessary in showing the painful loss of homes and civil liberties. While there are definite similarities between the political climate during WWII and that of our own post-9/11 world, Kadohata doesn't burden her narrative with contemporary political baggage.

The power of WEEDFLOWER is in Kadohata's clarity of detail and her deeply personal approach to the material. When Sumiko is feeling sorriest for herself, she meets Frank, a Mohave boy who is angry that the American government has placed the Japanese internment camp on the Mohave reservation. He tells Sumiko that the Mohave do not have the running water and electricity that are part of the amenities at camp. "You're not the first people to lose things," he says.

Sumiko recalls her grandfather telling her about his immigration from Japan. "I don't see sky for many long time. I feel close to ultimate boredom. That mean close to lose mind. Inside myself, I feel like screaming. Outside myself, I calm." Instead of giving into "the ultimate boredom," Sumiko makes the desert bloom.

--- Reviewed by Sarah A. Wood

"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 desperation of people hanging on to their sanity, the gifts of friendship, the price of freedom - - these must all be thoughtfully pondered and shared. Reviewer mcHAIKU also recommends that you find Allen Say's provocative writings: "Music for Alice" (# 0618311181) & "Home of the Brave" (# 061821223X) to read with family or friends.

In the bittersweet yet hopeful ending, the author of "Weedflower" has Sumiko leaving her Mohave friend, Frank, for a new life: Sumiko writes that leaving is "like you didn't know if people would let you in their grocery store" . . . and readers may continue to wonder if Sumiko's "freedom" will allow her to resume a quasi-normal existence? This beautifully told story should provoke much discussion and self-examination about how we view the rights of our neighbors. Will we allow these questions to transform our thinking . . . like the life cycle of the moth so important to Sumiko who transformed the desert with her treasured "kusabana" - - or weedflowers?