Kira Kira by Cynthia Kadohata

Kira Kira. Written by Cynthia Kadohata. 2004. ISBN: 0-689-85639-3. Winner of the Newbery Medal. Teen Fiction. Japanese American culture.

Kira Kira is the childhood tale of younger sister Katie, and her close bond with her older sister Lynn. As the girls family moves to south eastern U.S. in the 1950's, they are in the extreme minority. They live and interact only with Japanese Americans like themselves, and are ignored by all children and adults. They are each others best friends.

Their parents struggle to give them a good life, and work extreme hours at the chicken factories just to make ends meat. They are trying to save up for a house that Lynn and her mother so desperately want.

Lynn becomes very ill with anemia and lymphoma, and Katie is there to watch her suffer. As the childhood accounts go on, the girls bond becomes strained and then close again.

This book is engrossing to read and saddening when Lynn dies, but it is an interesting tale of an abnormally close childhood bond, and parents that will do next to anything for their children. It is heart warming to say the least.

This book is interesting, and I don't know how I would use this in the classroom. I feel like it does need to be read, but just like the main character Katie, I am struggling to find the common theme here. Probably that it is a theme of unbelievable love that a family has for one another.