Shaw Kuzki

Gr 4–7—Twelve-year-old Nozomi was born after the bombing that changed the city of Hiroshima forever, but she
witnesses its tragic effects in her community during the annual lantern-floating ceremony to honor the dead. This
prompts an intergenerational school art project that opens the students' eyes to the scope of their city's loss. This
potent novel explores the long-lasting effects of grief and centers a Japanese perspective that is rarely present in
American literature about World War II.… (more)

Second-generation A-bomb survivors in Hiroshima, Japan, use art to make sense of the tragedy that affected their families and neighbors.

Hitomi Koyama tanka poems throughout.

Quotes

We Japanese people, whether we like it or not, became aggressors in that miserable war. We also became victims. Both our crimes and our wounds are vast and profound. How on earth will we be able to make up for these crimes, to heal those wounds? These are things we'll have to ask ourselves as long as we live. (138-139)

This world is made up of little stories....Don't you think that presenting small stories in detail is precisely the most certain way to depict huge things? (140)… (more)