{"id":37118,"date":"2024-05-15T22:00:42","date_gmt":"2024-05-16T02:00:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/blog\/?p=37118"},"modified":"2024-05-15T22:00:42","modified_gmt":"2024-05-16T02:00:42","slug":"review-of-a-place-to-belong-by-cynthia-kadohata","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/blog\/?p=37118","title":{"rendered":"Review of A Place to Belong, by Cynthia Kadohata"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>A Place to Belong<\/em><\/p>\n

by Cynthia Kadohata
\nread by Jennifer Ikeda<\/p>\n

Simon & Schuster Audio, 2019. 9 hours on 7 discs.
\nReview written January 31, 2020, from a library audiobook<\/p>\n

A Place to Belong<\/em> opens at the end of World War II, with Hanako, her little brother Akira, and her parents on a ship going to Japan. Her family was imprisoned in camps during the war because of their Japanese heritage, and after the war, her parents were pressured to give up their American citizenship. Now they are headed to a village outside of Hiroshima, where Papa\u2019s parents still live. On the way there, Hanako sees people and places devastated beyond her wildest imaginings.<\/p>\n

Adjusting to Japan is difficult. And she is torn by the people \u2013 even children \u2013 begging for food. If she gives them rice, what if there\u2019s not enough to feed her own brother? In school, she\u2019s different from the other girls. Can she ever get them to accept her? Woven throughout the stories are memories from their family\u2019s time in the camps and her resultant mixed feelings about America.<\/p>\n

This was a part of the story of Japanese Americans that I hadn\u2019t heard before, so I was fascinated by the details. I have to admit that the book felt long and didn\u2019t have a driving plot \u2013 they were simply trying to survive, taking each day as it came. The love coming from Hanako\u2019s grandparents toward the grandchildren they just met was a continuing warm bright spot, and did make me glad I stuck it out and listened to the entire book.<\/p>\n

cynthiakadohata.com<\/a><\/p>\n

Buy from Amazon.com<\/a><\/p>\n

Disclosure: I am an Amazon Affiliate, and will earn a small percentage if you order a book on Amazon after clicking through from my site.<\/p>\n

Disclaimer: I am a professional librarian, but I maintain my website and blogs on my own time. The views expressed are solely my own, and in no way represent the official views of my employer or of any committee or group of which I am part.<\/p>\n

What did you think of this book?<\/p>\n

*Note* To try to catch up on posting reviews, I\u2019m posting the oldest reviews I\u2019ve written on my blog without making a page on my main website. They\u2019re still good books.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A Place to Belong by Cynthia Kadohata read by Jennifer Ikeda Simon & Schuster Audio, 2019. 9 hours on 7 discs. Review written January 31, 2020, from a library audiobook A Place to Belong opens at the end of World War II, with Hanako, her little brother Akira, and her parents on a ship going […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[39,10,32],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-37118","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-audiobooks","category-childrens-fiction-review","category-historical"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37118","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=37118"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37118\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":43774,"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37118\/revisions\/43774"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=37118"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=37118"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=37118"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}