Category Archives: book reviews

The Last Cherry Blossom – WWII Japan for kids

I’m an adult, but recently I enjoyed reading a middle-grade historical fiction book by Twitter friend Kathleen Burkinshaw. The Last Cherry Blossom is based closely on her mother’s stories of WWII and surviving the atomic bomb in Hiroshima. These days, … Continue reading

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Seiwa-en Japanese Garden and a WWII Japanese Internment Memoir

Last weekend was our big annual Japanese Festival, where our small but mighty Japanese community and our many friends work together to showcase Japanese cultural traditions and talents. It’s impressive. The Missouri Botanical Garden has the largest Japanese garden in … Continue reading

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Dream of the Water Children – a memoir of half worlds and unpleasant history

Fredrick Kakinami Cloyd is Black-Japanese, but actually he is Japanese, Chinese, Korean, and European from his mother’s side and black and Cherokee on his dad’s. He is Amerasian, a term Pearl Buck coined as she advocated for the many abandoned … Continue reading

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