Winner of the APALA Asian/Pacific American Award for Young Adult Literature
An ALA-YALSA Best Fiction for Young Adults Book. After a classmate commits suicide, Kana Goldberg—a half-Japanese, half-Jewish American—wonders who is responsible. She and her cliquey friends said some thoughtless things to the girl. Hoping that Kana will reflect on her behavior, her parents pack her off to her mother's ancestral home in Japan for the summer. There...

When Amaterasu Takahashi opens the door of her home to a badly scarred man claiming to be her grandson, she doesn't believe him. Her grandson and her daughter perished nearly 40 years ago during the bombing of Nagasaki. But the man carries with him a collection of sealed private letters that open a pandora's box of family secrets she had sworn to leave behind when she fled Japan. Will she allow herself to believe in a miracle?

Just when twelve-year-old Summer thinks nothing else can possibly go wrong in a year of bad luck, an emergency takes her parents to Japan, leaving Summer to care for her little brother while helping her grandmother cook and do laundry for harvest workers.

When Yoko moves from Japan to California, she decides to make and send origami swans to her grandmother for her birthday.

Soon after a young girl arrives in Japan, she, her grandmother, her aunties, and some cousins celebrate cultural traditions together while visiting a bath house.

As five-year-old Keiko and her eighty-five year old Obi, or grandmother, excitedly prepare to celebrate the Star Festival, Tanabata Matsuri, Obi tells the story of Tanabata. Includes information about the festival and how it is celebrated.

Yoko's grandmother tells about how the bell in their town that would ring on New Year's Eve is given up during the war for scrap metal, finds its way back to their village, and becomes known as the Peace Bell.

"Sakura's dad gets a new job in America, so she and her parents make the move from their home in Japan. When she arrives in the States, most of all she misses her grandmother and the cherry blossom trees, under which she and her grandmother used to play and picnic. She wonders how she'll ever feel at home in this new place, with its unfamiliar language and landscape. One day, she meets her neighbor, a boy named Luke, and begins to feel a little more...

"A beautiful hymn to nature featuring haikus, set in a quiet corner of Japan. An old lady and her granddaughter enjoy strolling through the countryside in the middle of summer. The grandmother explains to the little girl all about the wonderful world of bees, and why these beautiful insects are so important for life on our planet. Years later, the granddaughter returns with her son to the place where her grandmother's house once stood, and thanks...

The gang returns from vacation to find that a new student council has been assembled in their absence. Later, Thoru goes to see her grandmother and a part of her past is revealed that she had shut away. And, Mayuko gives Shigure some advice for parent-teacher conferences.