By the author of the 'Kira-Kira', winner of the Newberry Medal Award.
"This is what it felt like to be lonely:
1. Like everyone was looking at you. Sumiko felt this once in a while.
2. Like nobody was looking at you. Sumiko felt this a lot.
3. Like you didn't care about anything at all. She felt this maybe once a week.
4. Like you were just about to cry over every little thing. She felt this about once daily."
Raised on a flower farm in California, twelve-year-old Sumiko is used to being the only Japanese girl in her class. Even when the other kids tease her, she always has her flowers and family to go home to.
That all changes when Pearl Harbor is bombed by the Japanese. 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 on an Indian reservation.
There 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.
Ages: 10+
