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Sep 10, 2011

Roos rated it:

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12 comments like (3 people liked it)

Oct 26, 2011

Imas rated it:

Sumiko, gadis kecil berusia 12 tahun warga Amerika Serikat keturunan Jepang dibesarkan oleh keluarga paman dan bibinya di perkebunan bunga di California setelah kecelakaan lalu lintas yang menewaskan kedua orang tuanya.

Sumiko sudah terbiasa menjadi satu-satunya orang Jepang dikelas dan menjadi bahan ejekan, namun dia bahagia karena masih memiliki keluarga adiknya Tak tak, kedua sepupunya Ichiro dan Bull, kakeknya Jiichan dan tentu saja Paman dan bibi serta kebun bunga yang dirawat d More...

1 comment like (2 people liked it)

Sep 11, 2011

Helvry rated it:

Bagaimana rasanya kesepian? bagaimana rasanya bosan? bagaimana rasanya meninggalkan kamp? Itulah pertanyaan-pertanyaan yang diajukan Sumiko dan ia sendiri yang menjawabnya.

Novel ini bercerita tentang kehidupan keluarga Jepang-Amerika pada masa perang dunia ke-2. Sumiko, seorang gadis berumur dua belas tahun tinggal bersama Pamannya yang bernama Hatsumi, Bibinya (namanya tidak disebutkan dalam novel), Kakeknya, Masanori Matsuda yang dipanggil Jichan, dua sepupunya yaitu Ichiro dan Bul More...

6 comments like (5 people liked it)

Apr 29, 2007

Kristl rated it:

I am so satisfied that Cynthia Kadohata's Weedflower was chosen as the One Book Arizona for Kids for 2007 because I likely might not have gotten to it just yet, if at all.

Having just finished it-minutes ago, my thoughts are fresh and still congealing, which is not how I would normally write a review. However, it has been a long while since I've reached the end of a book-especially one written so quietly and unaffectedly-and had the urge to just cry.

I had to reflect upon More...

1 comment like (3 people liked it)

Apr 26, 2008

Kerri rated it:

Most kids don’t even realize that when the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor, we treated all Japanese like outcasts. We took them from their homes and put them in “camps” so that they would no longer be a part of American society. In some cases, we were not much better than the Germans because we treated them horribly simply because they were a different race. This book is interesting to use to find out more about what conditions these people lived in. Not a ton of action, but a lot of informatio More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Dec 24, 2008

Rebecca rated it:

Cynthia Kadohata does a beautiful job at bringing to life the history of interned Japanese Americans. While I had considered the inequity and unconstitutional nature of Japanese interment camps, my approach to them had been rather academic. This story helped to solidify the inhumanity and cruelty of the camps. Additionally, she artfully brings in the inexcusable treatment of Native Americans as she builds a relationship between the protagonist, Sumiko and Frank, a young Native American living on More...

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Jan 03, 2011

Nobies57 rated it:

12 year old Sumiko is forced to leave their flower farm in California for a Japanese internment camp on Arizona Indian land following the bombing of Pearl Harbor. Living with her younger brother Tuk Tuk, her aunt and two older cousins, Ikiro and Bull, Sumiko deals with the injustices of a country that takes away her civil rights and yet asks for her allegiance. Mr. Moto, an elderly man asks Sukimo for her help in growing a garden, a subject in which Sumiko is knowledgeable having worked her unc More...

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Dec 21, 2010

Ashley rated it:

Weedflower by Cynthia Kadohata is an extraordinary book. This book is about Sumiko, a twelve year old Japanese girl. She lives with her grandfather Jiichan, her aunt and uncle, her younger brother Tak-Tak, and two cousins, Ichiro and Bull. Her parents died in a car crash years earlier. Her family runs a flower farm that produces high quality flowers for florists throughout the area in California.Sumiko is used to being the only Japanese girl in her class. Even when the other kids tease her, she More...

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Dec 08, 2010

Chris rated it:

Kadohata, Cynthia. Weedflower(2006)
Weedflower is a historical fiction novel set in the time of World War II. Sumiko and her brother, TakTak, live in California on their aunt and uncle’s flower farm. When Pearl Harbor is bombed, Japanese Americans are rounded up and sent to internment camps for the duration of the war. Sumiko and her family are forced to leave their home, the flower farm and most of their belongings and are sent to the Poston internment camp in the middle of the Arizona More...

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Jul 18, 2010

Beth rated it:

Sumiko is a twelve year old Japanese-American living in California during WWII. Both of her parents were killed in a car accident. Sumiko and her younger brother are cared for by their extended family. The entire family lives together on the flower farm that they own. The farm specializes in growing weedflowers and carnations. Just before WWII begins tensions between white Americans and Japanese-Americans are intense. Sumiko does not have any friends at school, and is judged by adults becau More...

5 comments like

Apr 29, 2010

Monika added it

Weedflower is a touching story by Cynthia Kadohata. Sumiko is a strong and loving Japanese-American who lives on a flower farm in California. Then, War breaks out between Japan and America. Sumiko and her family are torn away from their flower farm and shipped to a military barrack in Poston, Arizona. In a place that is dry and hot with sand everywhere, Sumiko’s dream to own her own flower shop seams to disappear. Not only this, the camp is also on an Indian Reserve and the Indians are not ha More...

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Jan 27, 2011

Janeen-san rated it:

This book was a great read. It's the second historical fiction book I've read recently, and both were great. In some of my earlier reviews, I said I avoided historical fiction books "like the plague", but now I guess they're not so bad. =) I really liked this book, and when I was at the library it's cover mainly attracted me. But I should know not to judge a book by it's cover! The cover was nice, but the information considering the book on the inside flap motivated me so much that I e More...

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Sep 11, 2011

Carolyn rated it:

wide reading for CI 546

grade level: middle school

genre: realistic historical fiction

themes: Family, friendship, survival, racism, misrepresentation, discrimination, government policy

cultures: Japanese Americans in the post-Pearl Harbor bombing U.S.

awards: Kadohata won the US Pen Award for this book -- she has won the Newbery Award for a previous novel

school use: A great book to tie in to a social studies unit on World War II! Also gre More...

0 comments like

Jan 06, 2011

Travis rated it:

Weedflower is about Sumiko, a Japanese-American girl whose family is sent to a relocation camp in Poston, Arizona during WWII. This camp was actually on a reservation (constructed there against the wishes of the Mohave tribe who owned the land) and one of the themes of the book is the uneasy relations between the Japanese and the Indians there, shown through Sumiko's friendship with a Mohave boy named Frank.[return][return]It was a good read, though unsurprisingly enraging. It's definitely a chi More...

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Jan 06, 2012

Lila rated it:

Weedflower by Cynthia Kadohata
Bagaimanakah rasanya kesepian yang amat sangat? Apakah ketika engkau merasa tidak seorang pun sedang tidak menatapmu meski di tengah2 banyak orang? Sumiko, gadis Jepang usia 13 tahun sering mengalami hal ini. Sebagai anak Jepang yang tinggal di America, bersekolah dan bertetangga dengan Americans, jangan terlalu berharap mempunyai seorang teman. Sumiko, gadis yatim piatu, bersama adiknya Takao atau Tak Tak dibesarkan keluarga paman dan kakeknya yang berimigras More...

2 comments like

Aug 10, 2010

Jenne rated it:

12 year old Sumiko, a Japanese-American girl, lives with her Aunt and Uncle on a little flower farm in Southern California. The only Japanese at her school, Sumiko yearns to belong and have friends, but with the attack on Pearl Harbor all her hopes and dreams are shattered and her family torn apart.
Suspected of being terrorist, Sumiko’s uncle and grandfather are sent away to a prisoner of war camp, and she, her Aunt, two older cousins and brother are sent to a camp in the Arizona desert on More...

0 comments like

Feb 07, 2011

Nancy rated it:

Published: 2006, Atheneum Books for Young Readers
Age: 10-13
Sumiko is a 12 year old Japanese American girl whose parents died in a car accident. She and her little brother live with their aunt and uncle, grandfather, and 2 older male cousins on a flower farm in southern California. Sumiko is content at home but feels rejected by the white children from her school and actually has a horribly humiliating incident happen to her at a birthday party of one of her classmates. Eventually he More...

0 comments like

Jun 09, 2010

Amanda added it

i read Weedflower as an IR book. this book is about Sumiko having a normal life. even though others teased her in her class she stil had her fmaily and flowers to go to. but once pearl harbor happened everything changed. everybody got scared all Japanese were spies. so she and her family got sent to an internment camp. there she finds out its an indian reservation, she makes a friend but how can she survive.
i have an text-to-world connection. this connects to the holocaust. both Japanes More...

0 comments like

Mar 19, 2009

Rachel rated it:

Great book on a touchy subject. Most people don't realize (or block it out) that Americans had internment camp for the Japanese during WWII. I will say that I was interested in this book because of the subject matter, which I knew about before but didn't have a whole lot of information on. I do know about how some people of that generation, esp those that fought in the Pacific half of WWII, had towards Japanese people and it wasn't very positive. My grandfather served with the US Air Force in th More...

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Apr 08, 2010

Mateo rated it:

This book was about a girl named sumiko. She was just a regular japanese-american student when pearl harbor was bombed. Things changed. Nobody liked her anymore and the U.S government put her and her relatives in a camp with thousands of other japanese-americans.
I can relate to sumiko because we both faced challages being the color or race we are in certain groups/places. I haven't faced discrimination but I felt what it felt like to be hated.
I gave this book 5 stars becaus More...

0 comments like

Feb 11, 2012

Learning Community rated it:

In Weedflower, a Cynthia Kadohata book, Japanese-American Sumiko's life is upside down. Sumiko has no friend's at school and the World War isnt such a good part of her life. Sumiko is sent to an interment camp and is seperated from her gradfather and her uncle. She thinks life cant get any worse. But it does. Sumiko finds herself in a desert and theres dust everywhere, she hates it.

In Weedflower More...

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Oct 06, 2009

Ms Anderson rated it:

Like Kira-Kira, it took a few chapters to really get into. Unlike Kira-Kira, I was left with a strong sense of disappointment at the end of the book. I wish it had been longer, or that there were a sequel so I could find out what happened to Sumiko after the end. On the one hand, this is good--it means the author has drawn me into the story and made me curious. However, I don't know if my curiosity will be satisfied, which makes me sad.

I think it's an important book, despite the abr More...

0 comments like

Jan 30, 2011

Pam rated it:

This was a thought provoking book about the internment of Americans of Japanese descent during World War II. The story is told through the eyes of an adolescent girl who tries to make sense of the bigotry she experiences, the nature of the camp (is it prison or is it protection?), the dreams she has and how to hold onto them, the reactions of the adults in the camp and ultimately, the nature of freedom in this country. The story has interesting layers; there are no easy answers. The friendship b More...

1 comment like

May 09, 2010

Dora rated it:

"Weedflower" by Cynthia Kadohata takes place in the 1940’s, telling the story of a Japanese girl and her experience of living in America during the bombing of Pearl Harbor. Before Pearl Harbor, Sumiko, 12, and her family owned a flower farm in California, where she often helped out. She was the only Japanese girl in her class and was often teased, but didn’t mind much about it, as she had her family and farm at home. Sumiko had high hopes and dreams and felt that her life was perfect t More...

0 comments like

Feb 03, 2011

Dylan L. added it

This novel focuses on the Japanese-American’s life in camp. Innocent people in America were forced into camps because of what was going on across the ocean! It tells the Japanese-American’s story very well. Conditions were not good, but they learned to adapt and say to themselves “This is my life. I have to deal with it.” I know for a fact that the author was Japanese-American, so she wanted to write about her family’s perspective of World War II.
I think the book was written because of t More...

0 comments like

Jul 05, 2010

Sarita rated it:

In this book we meet an Japanese American girl, Sumiko. She lives with her aunt and uncle (and brother, cousins, and grandfather) on a flower farm, and they make a living by selling flowers. The flowers are the center of her life, and her dream is to open a flower shop when she's an adult.

Over the course of the book Sumiko's dreams are dashed by
circumstances she doesn't fully understand. Or to put it less poetically, she learns a few lessons about how the world works.

More...

0 comments like

Jun 15, 2011

Etta rated it:

There are some very nice things about this book, even if it was quite painful in many ways. The author realistically portrays the plight of a Japanese-American family in an internment camp at Poston, Arizona. Since Poston is on an Indian reservation, 12 year-old Sumiko becomes acquainted with a young Mohave boy and learns about the prejudice the Indians face. (Arizona granted the American Indians the right to vote in 1948.) Also, shown are the emotions of Japanese-American families as their More...

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Jun 03, 2011

Jill rated it:

This book captures a little known part of U.S. history--the time during WWII when Japanese-Americans were interred in camps after the bombing of Pearl Harbor. As this is something I never even knew about until I was an adult, I was interested to read this fictionalized account. Sumiko and her family are split up--her uncle and grandfather sent to South Dakota, while she, her younger brother, aunt, and two cousins are sent to Arizona. The change from temperate California to the desolate, hot dese More...

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May 07, 2010

Robert added it

The author is telling a fictional tale but one based on memories of her father having to leave his home and join his family at the Poston internment camp in the desert during World War II on the Colorado River Indian Reservation, and informed by interviews and conversations with other internees.

The author's endnote describes facts either long forgotten or never known today: more Indians left the reservation lands to fight in the war than had ever before left, "the biggest singl More...

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Apr 29, 2011

Keely rated it:

I read this book in the 6th grade, and it opened my eyes to many things that I had no idea about. I didn't know what challenges Japanese-American's faced during WW2, nor did I have any idea that they were segregated and forced into camps. The main character's aspirations, works, and dreams all stood out to me as she kept them strong even in the face of adversity. I learned about the hardships that she faced, as well as they challenge of acceptance in society. This book opened my heart and mind o More...

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