A Place to Belong
Written by Cynthia Kadohata
Narrated by Jennifer Ikeda
4/5
()
About this audiobook
“Another gift from Kadohata to her readers.” —Booklist (starred review)
A Japanese American family, reeling from their ill treatment in the Japanese imprisonment camps, gives up their American citizenship to move back to Hiroshima, unaware of the devastation wreaked by the atomic bomb in this piercing and all too relevant look at the aftermath of World War II by Newbery Medalist Cynthia Kadohata.
World War II has ended, but while America has won the war, twelve-year-old Hanako feels lost. To her, the world, and her world, seems irrevocably broken.
America, the only home she’s ever known, imprisoned then rejected her and her family—and thousands of other innocent Americans—because of their Japanese heritage, because Japan had bombed Pearl Harbor, Hawaii.
Japan, the country they’ve been forced to move to, the country they hope will be the family’s saving grace, where they were supposed to start new and better lives, is in shambles because America dropped bombs of their own—one on Hiroshima unlike any other in history. And Hanako’s grandparents live in a small village just outside the ravaged city.
The country is starving, the black markets run rampant, and countless orphans beg for food on the streets, but how can Hanako help them when there is not even enough food for her own brother?
Hanako feels she could crack under the pressure, but just because something is broken doesn’t mean it can’t be fixed. Cracks can make room for gold, her grandfather explains when he tells her about the tradition of kintsukuroi—fixing broken objects with gold lacquer, making them stronger and more beautiful than ever. As she struggles to adjust to find her place in a new world, Hanako will find that the gold can come in many forms, and family may be hers.
Cynthia Kadohata
Cynthia Kadohata is the author of the Newbery Medal–winning book Kira-Kira, the National Book Award winner The Thing About Luck, the Jane Addams Peace Award and PEN America Award winner Weedflower, Cracker!, Outside Beauty, A Million Shades of Gray, Half a World Away, Checked, A Place to Belong, Saucy, and several critically acclaimed adult novels, including The Floating World. She lives with her dogs and hockey-playing son in California. Visit her online at CynthiaKadohata.com.
More audiobooks from Cynthia Kadohata
Checked Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Saucy Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5A Million Shades of Gray Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Half a World Away Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5
Related to A Place to Belong
Related audiobooks
While I Was Away Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Dear America: Young Readers' Edition: The Story of an Undocumented Citizen Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Farewell to Manzanar Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Blackbird Fly Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Brother's Keeper Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5When My Name Was Keoko Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Letters from Rifka Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Listen, Slowly Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Usual Suspects Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Dreamer Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Only Road Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Girl Under a Red Moon: Growing Up During China's Cultural Revolution (Scholastic Focus) Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Paper Wishes Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Little White Duck: A Childhood in China Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Everlasting Nora: A Novel Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Red Scarf Girl: A Memoir of the Cultural Revolution Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Finding Junie Kim Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5I Lived on Butterfly Hill Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Stella by Starlight Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Nine, Ten: A September 11 Story Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Unfinished Angel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Truth as Told by Mason Buttle Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5All Rise for the Honorable Perry T. Cook Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Set Me Free (Show Me a Sign, Book 2) Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Genesis Begins Again Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Breaking Stalin's Nose Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Great Gilly Hopkins Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Her Own Two Feet: A Rwandan Girl's Brave Fight to Walk (Scholastic Focus) Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Unbound: A Novel in Verse Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Shooting Kabul Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5
Children's Historical For You
Anne of Green Gables Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5How Do You Live? Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5I Survived the Sinking of the Titanic, 1912 (I Survived #1) Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Allies Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Little House on the Prairie Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5By the Shores of Silver Lake Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Sword Thief (The 39 Clues, Book 3) Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Cleopatra VII: Daughter of the Nile Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5One False Note (The 39 Clues, Book 2) Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Little House in the Big Woods Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Making Bombs for Hitler: A Novel Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Hitler's Last Days: The Death of the Nazi Regime and the World's Most Notorious Dictator Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The First Four Years Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Code Talker: A Novel About the Navajo Marines of World War Two Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Lost Heir (The Gryphon Chronicles, Book 1) Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5I Survived the Attacks of September 11, 2001(I Survived #6) Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5These Happy Golden Years Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5On the Banks of Plum Creek Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A Night Divided Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Long Winter Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Little Town on the Prairie Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Projekt 1065: A Novel of World War II Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Words on Fire Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Refugee Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Iceberg Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5A Place to Hang the Moon Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Edge of Anarchy: A Post-Apocalyptic Survival Thriller Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Heroes: A Novel of Pearl Harbor Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Ground Zero Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Mark of the Thief (Mark of the Thief, Book 1) Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5
Reviews for A Place to Belong
34 ratings4 reviews
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5This is a tough story, sensitively told. Set in the aftermath of the American Internment of Japanese Americans, Hanako and her family are repatriated to Japan, after being forced to renounce their citizenship under duress. They are "returned" to Hiroshima and Hanako is suddenly adjusting to a country and a life that is nothing like where she grew up. It's a quiet moving book -- a lot happens, but much of the emotion lurks beneath the surface. There is the awful fear of starvation, the knowledge of hunger balanced against the freedom of a new life with her grandparents. It brings home a lot of the beauty of traditional Japanese culture and values, while embracing the West and the opportunity America represented. It holds America accountable, but in a compassionate manner. It illustrates the heartbreaking decisions that war forces families to make.
Advanced Readers Copy provided by Edelweiss. - Rating: 2 out of 5 stars2/5Interesting look at the life of a Japanese American family, but as far as the book itself goes I'm kinda meh on it. The story lacked structure and the pacing felt weird to me. Important topic but
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5After spending years in an internment camp, Hanako and her family are moving to Japan at the end of World War II. But Hanako has never lived in Japan, never even met her grandparents, and she wonders if she will fit in here in her new home country.There are not enough books about the post-World War II period in general, and I like that this one doesn’t shy away from noting the terrible effects of war, including the massive fallout from the atomic bomb, which includes devastation both physical and emotional. Kadohata also doesn’t shy away from calling the internment camps “prisons,” which is far more accurate than the innocuous-sounding “camp.” She also notes how murky life can be though, with far too few things being simply black-or-white; Hanako often questions her own decisions and wonders if it makes her bad or good to help out her starving neighbors while her own family is also struggling to eat enough. Speaking of Hanako, I didn't super love her as a character. She has a tendency to over-exaggerate everything as 'the best ever,' particularly when trying to placate her younger brother. This isn't enthusiasm though; she herself calls it "lying" and sometimes debates whether or not to tell such a lie. Meanwhile, her younger brother Akira is considered endearing by all his family but he seems to throw epic tantrums that are more fitting of a younger child. Their parents are pretty generic and without personality. On the flip side, I absolutely loved Baachan and Jiichan, the children's grandparents. When the book was over, I was sad to be parting with them. The relationship between the grandparents and grandchildren was super sweet, with the grandparents eternally self-sacrificing and the children actually realizing this and wanting to be as loving as possible back.While the story itself is pretty good, I am simply not a fan of Kadohata’s style. She seems to write ‘down’ to children; the subject matter can be difficult but the writing is very simplistic (little metaphor, simile, lyrical prose, etc.). Perhaps this *could* be good for reluctant readers but then the length of this book (400 pages) would turn them off. Also she excessively uses exclamation marks! Even when they are completely unnecessary! Because apparently this is the only way she knows how to create tension! Even in moments that aren’t actually tense!The cover illustration is perfect; the inner illustrations (black-and-white pen drawings) mostly don’t add a lot, although I do really like the one of the family working in the rice paddy and the one of the family having their portrait taken.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5After Hanako’s family’s internment during WWII, they take a ship to Japan to live with Papa’s parents, having chosen repatriation. There Hanako sees the impact of the war and her Baachan and Jiichan’s struggle to grow and maintain their crops. Hanako feels apart from her American life but also from life and culture in Japan. As she thoughtfully takes in all that she experiences, good and bad, she always has the love of her family to keep her grounded. A deliberate pacing of prose that matches Hanako’s thoughtful observations, with moments of joy, humor and sadness that pop up unexpectedly. Surely the first title in children's literature that explores what happened after the internment.