Read moreĪ well balanced narrative.I listened to this as an unabridged audiobook, narrated by Kimberly Farr, and was particularly impressed that it told, not only the story of the internment of the Japanese, but also the effect this had on the indigenous Indian population, whose land they were encamped on.We first meet Sumiko, in the days before WWII, living in California. Weedflower is the story of the rewards and challenges of a friendship across the racial divide, as well as the based-on-real-life story of how the meeting of Japanese Americans and Native Americans changed the future of both.

With searing insight and clarity, Newbery Medal-winning author Cynthia Kadohata explores an important and painful topic through the eyes of a young girl who yearns to belong. But then she meets a young Mohave boy who might just become her first real friend.if he can ever stop being angry about the fact that the internment camp is on his tribe's land. Sumiko soon discovers that the camp is on an Indian reservation and that the Japanese are as unwanted there as they'd been at home. The vivid color of her previous life is gone forever, and now dust storms regularly choke the sky and seep into every crack of the military barrack that is her new 'home.' Other Americans start to suspect that all Japanese people are spies for the emperor, even if, like Sumiko, they were born in the United States! As suspicions grow, Sumiko and her family find themselves being shipped to an internment camp in one of the hottest deserts in the United States. That all changes after the horrific events of Pearl Harbor. Even when the other kids tease her, she always has had her flowers and family to go home to.

Raised on a flower farm in California, Sumiko is used to being the only Japanese girl in her class. Twelve-year-old Sumiko feels her life has been made up of two parts: before Pearl Harbor and after it.

Weedflower book