Pearl

Starred review from July 1, 2024
Her revered great-grandmother gravely ill, 13-year-old Japanese American Amy travels alone from her birthplace in Hawaii to Hiroshima. Just as she's growing to know and cherish her Japanese family, Pearl Harbor is bombed. Forced to become an army translator, with her parents and baby brother interned back in the U.S., Amy's loyalties are grievously torn. Though injured and despondent after Hiroshima's bombing, she clings to the words of her wise sōsobo, a daring pearl-diver in her youth: survive and thrive. Multi-award-winning author Smith evokes an authentic first-person voice to etch Amy's conflicting emotions with compelling immediacy. Acclaimed illustrator Norrie's semi-realistic art, rendered with bold pencil line over washes of gray-blue and black, masterfully conveys the terrible realities of this war-torn world--especially powerful in wordless panels depicting Amy's anguished struggle in the horrific aftermath of the bomb--as well as nuanced moments of tenderness, sorrow, or enlightenment. A thing of great beauty and wonder growing as a response to friction and injury, a pearl is an inspired, indelible metaphor for this luminous, poignant coming-of-age tale set against harrowing, heart-wrenching real life events.

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Starred review from July 22, 2024
A Japanese American 13-year-old questions her identity and loyalties when the two countries go to war in this emotional and riveting story of perseverance. Growing up in 1941 Hawaii, Amy heard magical stories about her great-grandmother’s career as a pearl diver, called an ama, in Honshu. When she receives news that Sōsobo is ill, Amy makes the solo journey to visit her in Hiroshima. There, Amy meets family for the first time, and she quickly adjusts to life in Japan despite initial worries that her being American born would make the transition difficult. But when Japan attacks Pearl Harbor, Amy is forbidden from returning to the U.S. Moreover, she’s conscripted into working as a monitor girl to translate radio transmissions from English into Japanese. Rumors of Japanese Americans being imprisoned in the U.S. leave Amy torn, wondering whether America is truly the land of the free, like she’s always been told. Harrowing scenes of violence and tragedy are depicted by Norrie (Breaking Up) in a haunting progression of inky black panels while a muted blue and white palette adds ethereal ambiance to Amy’s everyday life. Paired with carefully plotted dialogue and character interactions by Smith (American Wings), the creators emphasize Amy’s struggles to heed her sōsobo’s advice: “ikinokoru,” or “you must survive.” Ages 10–14.

September 1, 2024
In this graphic novel, a Japanese American girl visiting family outside Hiroshima is trapped there after Japan bombs Pearl Harbor. Amy's sosobo (great-grandmother), whose underwater pearl-diving feats are beloved family lore, urges the girl to learn survival, just as she had to. Amy does survive, even as life gets more and more brutal. When the Japanese military in Hiroshima makes her translate American radio broadcasts, Amy feels like a traitor -- until she learns that her parents are in an American prison camp and that her baby brother has died. Amy is devastated, but Sosobo, on her deathbed, still insists Amy survive, and even thrive, because "life is a treasure." In 1945, Amy is released from work -- just as the bomb is dropped on Hiroshima. She lives, barely (a friend dies in her arms), and is later asked by the Americans to transcribe other survivors' stories; a haunting full-page panel shows a bomb cloud of papers rising from her typewriter as people share their experiences. Eleven years after arriving in Japan, Amy is finally allowed to return to her parents, who have survived. Her fight to endure is fittingly depicted as an underwater tussle with death and a triumphant return to the surface holding aloft a treasure -- a giant pearl. Black-and-white illustrations colored with a solemn slate blue make expert use of the format to tell this painful and little-known history of Japanese American "strandees" whose stories often went untold for fear of American retaliation against "traitors." Jennifer M. Brabander

(Copyright 2024 by The Horn Book, Incorporated, Boston. All rights reserved.)

July 1, 2024
In this graphic novel, a Japanese American girl visiting family outside Hiroshima is trapped there after Japan bombs Pearl Harbor. Amy's sosobo (great-grandmother), whose underwater pearl-diving feats are beloved family lore, urges the girl to learn survival, just as she had to. Amy does survive, even as life gets more and more brutal. When the Japanese military in Hiroshima makes her translate American radio broadcasts, Amy feels like a traitor -- until she learns that her parents are in an American prison camp and that her baby brother has died. Amy is devastated, but Sosobo, on her deathbed, still insists Amy survive, and even thrive, because "life is a treasure." In 1945, Amy is released from work -- just as the bomb is dropped on Hiroshima. She lives, barely (a friend dies in her arms), and is later asked by the Americans to transcribe other survivors' stories; a haunting full-page panel shows a bomb cloud of papers rising from her typewriter as people share their experiences. Eleven years after arriving in Japan, Amy is finally allowed to return to her parents, who have survived. Her fight to endure is fittingly depicted as an underwater tussle with death and a triumphant return to the surface holding aloft a treasure -- a giant pearl. Black-and-white illustrations colored with a solemn slate blue make expert use of the format to tell this painful and little-known history of Japanese American "strandees" whose stories often went untold for fear of American retaliation against "traitors."

(Copyright 2024 by The Horn Book, Incorporated, Boston. All rights reserved.)