Kira-Kira

Kira-Kira is a young adult novel by Cynthia Kadohata. It won the Newbery Medal for children's literature in 2005. The book's plot is about a Japanese-American family living in Georgia. The main character and narrator of the story is a girl named Katie, a member of the Japanese-American family. "Kira-kira" (きら きら in hiragana) means sparkling, glittering, or shiny.

Plot summary

At the beginning of the story, it is the 1950s, and Lynn taught Katie the word Kira-kira and she uses it to describe everything meaning "glittering". Her older sister Lynn, and their parents are living in Iowa and own a unique Asian supermarket. When the store goes out of business, the family moves to an apartment home in Georgia where Katie's parents can work at a hatchery with other Japanese families. Lynn is Katie's best friend. Known for being remarkably intelligent, she can beat her Uncle Katsuhisa, a self-proclaimed chess grand master, at his own game.

As the plot progresses, Katie enters school, having difficulty being the only Japanese-American in her class. Her grades are solid, average C's, in comparison to Lynn's consistent A's. Lynn becomes friends with a popular girl, Amber, whom Katie dislikes immensely, and starts becoming interested in boys, often dropping Katie to go hang out with people her age. Katie eventually becomes friends with a girl named Silly Kilgore, whom she meets while waiting in the car at her mother's job. Silly's mother backs having a union at the plant to fight for higher wages and better working conditions, though Katie's mother opposes it.

In between, Lynn becomes sick with Lymphoma. Amber (whom Katie thought was phony anyway) dumps her as a friend, and Lynn becomes even sicker. Her parents buy her a house that Lynn gets to choose to make her feel better. The house seems to be curing Lynnie, until their little brother Sammy gets caught in a metal animal trap on Mr. Lyndon's (owner of the hatchery) vast property during a picnic one day, distressing her.

Lynn slowly progresses to become blank and irritable. Eventually her parents told Katie that Lynn has lymphoma. When Katie looks lymphoma up in the encyclopedia, she discovers that Lynn could die.

The year Katie is eleven, Lynn dies, alone on New Year's Day, when Katie goes outside for a break shortly after caring for her. Before Lynn's death, she and Katie had gotten into an argument. Katie fell asleep outside and her father woke her and told her Lynn had died. After her death, Katie realizes why Lynn had taught her the word kira-kira; she wanted to remind her to always look at the world as a shining place and to never lose hope though there might be harsh hurdles in life. Katie keeps Lynn's belongings on her desk as an altar. The family feels that Lynn's spirit will stay around as long as they have her belongings around. Katie thinks that Lynn's spirit will only stay around 49 days after she dies (because that's what her uncle told her).

The same day Lynn dies, Katie's usually calm and restrained father breaks into an angry rage after seeing Sammy struggle with his limp. He takes Katie and goes and wrecks Mr. Lyndon's car, an act which shocks her. Later on, he goes to Mr. Lyndon and owns up to what he did, resulting in him getting fired. Katie is appalled that her father is now unemployed, but he tells her that there is another hatchery opening up in Missouri, where he will probably work next, even though it will be a longer drive.

Katie is left with Lynn's diary, and upon reading it, she realizes that Lynn knew she was going to die (as her will is dated several days before her death). Soon after, Katie's mother attends a pro-union meeting at the Kilgore house. One of the things that the union wanted to achieve was having a three-day grief leave for families handling adversities. Though Katie's mother knows it's a little late for their family, if she voted for the union, it wouldn't be too late for the next family suffering grief.

Later, a little bit after the holidays, Katie's parents attempt to cheer everyone up by taking them all on a wonderful, beautiful vacation. Katie recommends California because that is where Lynn would have wanted to go; California is where the sea she loved is and it is where Lynn wanted to live when she got older. The family arrives, and while Katie walks on the beach, she can hear Lynn's voice in the waves: "Kira-kira, kira-kira."

References

www.kira-kira.us/ website on the author and the book(s) also:http://www.carolhurst.com/titles/kirakira.html it talks about the book kira-kira