Weedflower
by Cynthia Kadohata
Atheneum
2006
pp. 272
Hardcover
ISBN 0689865740
$16.95
© 2006. From Weedflower by Cynthia Kadohata published by Atheneum Books for Young Readers, an imprint of Simon & Schuster Children’s Publishing. Used with permission.
Synopsis
Twelve-year-old Sumiko feels her life has been made up of two parts: before Pearl Harbor and after it. The good part and the bad part. Raised on a flower farm in California, Sumiko is used to being the only Japanese girl in her class. Even when the other kids tease her, she always has had her flowers and family to go home to.
That all changes after the horrific events of Pearl Harbor. Other Americans start to suspect that all Japanese people are spies for the emperor, even if, like Sumiko, they were born in the United States! As suspicions grow, Sumiko and her family find themselves being shipped to an internment camp in one of the hottest deserts in the United States. The vivid color of her previous life is gone forever, and now dust storms regularly choke the sky and seep into every crack of the military barrack that is her new “home.”
Sumiko soon discovers that the camp is on an Indian reservation and that the Japanese are as unwanted there as they’d been at home. But then she meets a young Mohave boy who might just become her first real friend...if he can ever stop being angry about the fact that the internment camp is on his tribe’s land.
With searing insight and clarity, Newbery Medal-winning author Cynthia Kadohata explores an important and painful topic through the eyes of a young girl who yearns to belong. Weedflower is the story of the rewards and challenges of a friendship across the racial divide, as well as the based-on-real-life story of how the meeting of Japanese Americans and Native Americans changed the future of both.
Read an excerpt
© 2006. WEEDFLOWER by Cynthia Kadohata. Published by Atheneum Books for Young Readers, an imprint of Simon & Schuster Children’s Publishing. Used with permission.
Read reviews
“Culling memories from her own family history, Cynthia Kadohata has written a powerful story about a painful chapter in American history. The excitement 12-year-old Sumiko feels when she’s invited to her first birthday party is replaced by hurt and confusion when the door is closed in her face. It’s a foretaste of the prejudice that spreads like weeds in a garden after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. The family is soon removed from their California flower farm and interred on a desert reservation in Arizona, where the Indians resent the intruders.”
- AudioFile
“...it is a haunting story of dramatic loss and subtle triumphs.”
- KLIATT
“Kadohata clearly and eloquently conveys her heroine’s mixture of shame, anger and courage. Readers will be inspired....”
- Publishers Weekly
“Kadohata combines impressive research and a lucent touch, bringing to life the confusion of dislocation....”
- Kirkus Spring & Summer Preview
About the author
Cynthia Kadohata’s father was held in the Poston (Arizona) interment camp during World War II. His experiences – and those of the tens of thousands of other Japanese and Japanese Americans – compelled her to write Weedflower. Ms Kadohata is the author of Kira-Kira, winner of the 2005 Newberry Medal and a New York Times bestseller. She has written three novels for adults, and her stories have appeared in the New Yorker, Ploughshares, Grand Street, and other publications. She lives with her son in California.
Visit your local library to borrow a copy of Weedflower. Or purchase it from Simon & Schuster.