if I didn't go to Africa to study animals, I might be a beautiful genius tennis player

kira-kira
cynthia kadohata
. . . . . . .

Most years I make it a point to read the latest Newbery (both winner and honors), but for one reason or another I've long avoided 2005's Kira-Kira. It might have been the cover photo, the front-flap synopsis, my insane aversion to size 16 font---but whatever made the miss, it was my loss. Kira-Kira, as the title suggests (the word means glittering in Japanese), simply shines.

Amidst shelves of books detailing the lives of fictional frustrations, Cynthia Kadohata's one foray into the Young Adult genre is a lung full of countryside air. Too often the YA fare centers around the hero's life in a Me Against the World tale, assuming all readers are familiar with the world's grungy reality and are in desperate need of more. They come from broken homes or the wrong side of the tracks, find themselves constantly alone or perpetually alienated. And while Kadohata's story, centering around a first generation Japanese-American girl in the 1950s, could certainly lean to that center, the brilliant news is that it doesn't.

Instead, her book is filled with the light of family and an innocent approach to a life that, while absolutely overrun in hardship, glitters just like our narrator's favorite Japanese word. Ten-year-old Katie learns to appreciate the ordinary from older sister and best friend Lynn, who inspires, if not controls, every aspect of Katie's life. In Katie's simple prose we see the sparkle of a chess game, a school dress, a colored Kleenex. Even more rewarding, we see the sparkle of her family: an adored baby brother, the revered older sister, the incredibly loving and honorable parents. It is clear that they work together, or not at all---a togetherness that is threatened when Lynn is diagnosed with lymphoma.

So before you storm the library, you might be needing that colored Kleenex. The words may be simple, but the emotions are almost too much for them to hold. Katie's loss becomes our loss, too, as we only see her beautiful world through her eyes---and so she sums up a typical reader's reaction quite nicely, in fact: "I cried and cried. For a while as I cried I hated my parents, as if it were their fault that Lynn was sick. Then I cried because I loved my parents so much."

Find and replace "parents" for "Kadohata" and you couldn't say it better. Kira-Kira may be despised for a love so cruelly lost, but it well deserves that gold sticker for its testament to the love of a family that will last forever, kira-kira.

. . . . . . . . . . .


first chapter here.

She said, "Maybe we can each make one unselfish wish."

"I wish for a house for you and for Mom."

"I wish you would be happy forever."

That left our father. I didn't know what he wanted most. It seemed the only thing he wanted was to take care of us. Every time it was his birthday, we got him aftershave lotion that our mother paid for. He always seemed to like it.