Dust of Eden
Gr 4–8—Mina is a typical Japanese American girl living in Seattle until December 1941, when her life is changed forever by the bombing of Pearl Harbor. From this point on, everything changes for the worst. People are racist toward her and her family, her father is arrested and carted away without cause, and her family is told to pack up their belongings and report to an "assembly center" to be moved away "for their own safety." This novel in verse follows Mina's trials as she is ripped away from her friends and the life she knew, and forced to live in demeaning conditions throughout the duration of World War II. Nagai does a wonderful job examining what it means to Mina and her family members to be American while not being treated as true citizens. The book explores the obstacles they are faced with as they try to build a life worth living in the internment camps. While Mina and her brother Nick are well-developed, her parents and grandfather would have benefitted from a more in-depth treatment. The poetry is sometimes clunky, and readers who are not familiar with novels in verse might find it cumbersome. The letters Mina writes, both to her best friend in Seattle and to her brother, offer interesting insight, although it is sometimes frustrating that the correspondence is not shown in its entirety. This novel fills gaps in many collections where newer tales of the Japanese internment are lacking, especially for this age range.—Ellen Norton, White Oak Library District, Crest Hill, IL