Skip to main content

Stealing Home

 


Written by: J. Torres
Illustrated by: David Namisato
Kids Can Press, 2021. Graphic Novel.

It's 1941 and Sandy Saito lives in Vancouver, Canada with his family. Sandy loves baseball, and the Asahi baseball team, which is his favorite Japanese Canadian team. Sandy's life is busy with school and baseball but some big changes are coming. First, his baseball team, the Asahi, loose the 1941 semifinals and in December the U.S. naval base Pearl Harbor is attacked. The attack on Pearl Harbor changes life for Sandy and his family and friends. With all the hardships that come because of the war, Sandy learns that life is like baseball, you have to deal with whatever is thrown your way. 

This is an emotional novel that contains historic details woven throughout a fictional story about a Japanese family and the unjust circumstances they were forced into. World War II affected so many people and this book gives readers a look at the injustices Japanese Canadians faced. The hardships are told in beautiful art that shows history in a sensitive way with a baseball theme woven throughout the story. 

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

If You Like...KPop Demon Hunters

KPop Demon Hunters has been one of the most talked-about movies of the summer. If you loved this movie as much as I did, you don't want the magic (or the music) to stop. Try reading these books that touch on some of the same topics and themes as the animated hit! Brick Dust and Bones By M. R. Fournet New York: Feiwel and Friends, 2023. Fiction. 247 pages. Orphaned Marius works in the family business--as their cemetery's ghost caretaker. However, Marius also moonlights as a monster hunter in order to earn the costly Mystic currency he needs to bring his mother back from the dead. As the window to bring his mother back begins to close, Marius's exploits get more and more dangerous, and he may have set his sights on a monster too big to handle on his own. Like Mira, Marius longs for familial connection, and his work as a monster hunter will satisfy the thrill of demon hunting for fans the movie. Where's Halmoni? By Julie J. Kim Seattle, WA: Little Bigfoot, 2017. Comics. W...

Review: Kareem Between

  Kareem Between By Shifa Saltagi Safadi New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons, 2024. Fiction. 324 pages.  Kareem loves football and as he gets ready to start seventh grade he dreams of someday becoming the first Syrian American NFL player. Seventh grade is not off to a great start for Kareem, after football tryouts don't go as he had planned, his best friend moves away, and his mom returns to Syria to help bring his sick grandfather to the US for treatment. So when Austin, the quarterback and coach's son, offers to talk to his dad and get Kareem on the football team in the spring, if he will cheat and do his homework for him, Kareem agrees. Kareem really wants to fit in at school and he is desperate to find a friend, but deep down he knows that doing Austin's homework isn't the right thing to do. And to make things harder, Kareem's mom asks him to be a friend to Fadi, a Syrian Christian refugee. He knows he should stand up for Fadi and help him adjust to the new school,...

Review: A World Without Summer

A World Without Summer: A Volcano Erupts, a Creature Awakens, and the Sun Goes Out Written by Nicholas Day Illustrated by Yas Imamura New York: Random House Studio, 2025. Informational. 294 pages. In 1815 on a small island in Indonesia, Mount Tambora erupted. The blast was the largest in human history, and one of the deadliest. Though it couldn't be understood at the time, the deadly blast half a world away would lead to catastrophic famine in Europe, prompt westward expansion in America, and inspire the novel Frankenstein  by Mary Shelley. The global climate disaster following the explosion also led to inventions like modern meteorology and the early invention of the bicycle. The people living at the time couldn't have seen how everything was connected, but this fast paced narrative assures that readers will. As he did in 2024's Sibert winner The Mona Lisa Vanishes, Nicholas Day does an impressive job of weaving together different historical events into one single, compell...