Kira-Kira by Cynthia Kadohata

From Goodreads,

"Chronicles the close friendship between two Japanese-American sisters growing up in rural Georgia during the late 1950s and early 1960s, and the despair when one sister becomes terminally ill. kira-kira (kee' ra kee' ra): glittering; shining Glittering. That's how Katie Takeshima's sister, Lynn, makes everything seem. The sky is kira-kira because its color is deep but see-through at the same time. The sea is kira-kira for the same reason. And so are people's eyes. When Katie and her family move from a Japanese community in Iowa to the Deep South of Georgia, it's Lynn who explains to her why people stop them on the street to stare. And it's Lynn who, with her special way of viewing the world, teaches Katie to look beyond tomorrow. But when Lynn becomes desperately ill, and the whole family begins to fall apart, it is up to Katie to find a way to remind them all that there is always something glittering -- kira-kira -- in the future. Luminous in its persistence of love and hope, Kira-Kira is Cynthia Kadohata's stunning debut in middle-grade fiction."

Goodreads - Kira-Kira

Awards and Nominations:

• Asian/Pacific American Award for Literature for Youth Literature (2005)
• Newbery Medal (2005)
• Dorothy Canfield Fisher Children's Book Award Nominee (2006)

My boyfriend and I decided to read all the books that had been awarded the Newbery Medal Award.  We started at the top of the list with the 2017 winner The Girl Who Drank The Moon.  I quickly devoured the book while he slowly trudged through it.  He eventually stopped reading it and never finished it.  I guess you can't force a gamer to become a book nerd.  But I figured it had been a while since I had read and reviewed a Newbery Medal book that it was time to get another one crossed off the list.  

Kira-Kira is told from the perspective of Katie, a young Japanese-American girl who is the middle child of three.  She adores her older sister Lynn, and her younger brother Sam adores her.  Her sister taught her about kira-kira which means glittering in Japanese.  When they were younger they would use the phrase carelessly talking about all the things they thought were kira-kira.  Katie goes through life as her parents work constantly to care for her and her siblings.  Over time her sister started to grow up, but she also started to grow sick.  Katie learns the true meaning of kira-kira as the book comes to a close. 

When I first started this book I was trying to figure out why it was awarded the Newbery Medal Award.  The book seemed to be moving slowly with nothing truly interesting happening.  But there was some pivotal point in the book where I started to realize why it was awarded the Newbery Medal.  As I read I realized some of the hardships that Japanese-Americans faced during the 1950s.  Their work conditions were absolutely horrendous.  In the book they all worked at hatcheries or at chicken plants.  That was the only job opportunities that they were given.  They were seen as outcasts in the towns they lived in.  The book states that they didn't have friends outside of their circle of people because people looked down on them.  Katie in the book continues to talk about how hard her parents are working and how tired they are.  Every time Katie talked about her parents working or how tired they were, I saw them in a different light.  Her parents were treated differently and had fewer opportunities, but they still worked hard and had hope that things would get better.  I don't feel that a child or even a young adult would be able to pull this theme of hope out of the book, but I did.  Hope became even more vital once we found out what was truly wrong with Lynn.  Everyone in the family had hope that Lynn would get better even though they could all see her deteriorating and getting worse.  Hope became a major player in this book, and what is initially kept the book and everyone in it moving forward. 

While this book had a strong thread of hope weaved into it, it was overall very dull.  There were only a couple of exciting things that happened, and they all happened toward the end of the book.  There was nothing in the beginning that made me get excited to turn the page.  The entire time I felt like I was forcing myself to keep reading.  I knew this book was on my Newbery Medal list so I had to read it.  There were a couple of things in the first couple of chapters that I got excited about because I felt like something big was going to happen, but then it didn't.  It was a very plain book with very little excitement, much like the lives of Katie and her family.

This book wasn't what I was expecting it to be.  I give this book 3 out of 5 stars.  If you are planning to read all the Newbery Medal winners then you'll have to read this book.  I don't think that my students would enjoy this book.  Many would say it was boring just after the first long chapter.