Several children's books have been written about Manjiro, who is thought to have been the first Japanese person to visit America. This is the first in-depth novel about his experiences and it is an interesting and well-written effort. Manjiro's amazing adventures held my attention, but I was also fascinated by his personality, which was nicely imagined by Preus through her extensive research of his life. A fishing boat accident in 1841 left him and his fellow sailors stranded and homeless, unable to return to Japan because of that country's isolationist policies. Despite missing his homeland desperately, Manjiro made the best of things, served well by his boundless curiosity, intelligence, and enthusiasm for adventure. Moments of pure poetry infuse the narrative and I loved Preus' descriptions of a remote, placid, peaceful Japan just prior to the opening of its boundaries to the West. I also loved the quotations from the Samurai Creed. The beautiful design of the novel has a Japanese flavor and the illustrations are from Manjiro's own sketches. An unusual and special book. Junior high and up.