Cousins Lou and Charlotte don’t know a lot about their grandmother’s life. When their Obaasan invites them to spend the day in her garden, she also invites them into their family’s secrets. Grandma shares her experience as a Japanese Canadian during WWII, revealing the painful story of Japanese internment. Her family was forced apart. Whole communities were uprooted, moved into camps, their belongings stolen. Lou and Charlotte struggle with the injustice, even as they marvel at their grandmother’s strength. They begin to understand how their identities have been shaped by racism, and that history is not only about the past.
Sheila A. Egoff Children’s Literature Prize , BC and YUKON Book Awards | 2024 | Short-listed
Red Cedar Book Award - Fiction Category | 2024 | Short-listed
Chocolate Lily Book Awards - Novel Category | 2024 | Short-listed
Fred Kerner Book Award | 2024 | Short-listed
"Beautifully done."
“A book that so beautifully captures the intimate and ongoing effects of internment on post war Japanese Canadian families. Bridger and Okihiro fully inhabit the idea that ‘history is not only about the past’ by tracing its present-day echoes and reverberations—in gardens, at dinner tables and through everyday familial relationships.”
"This book could also be included in a children’s literature class or in a thematic unit about works of literature that focus on the Second World War’s impact on people from different communities. Highly Recommended."
"A moving novel with much to recommend it to adult readers as well as to younger people."
"Two real-like cousins who are driven by social justice concerns have crafted a deeply moving novel that tells their family's story during the Japanese Canadian internment of the 1940s…This book could be utilized in a cross-curricular manner (fulfilling both Language and Social Studies requirements, for example) since the internment and forced relocation are found in junior/intermediate provincial curriculums across Canada."