BookDragon Japanese American

20th Century Boys (vol. 07) by Naoki Urasawa, with the cooperation of Takashi Nagasaki, English adaptation by Akemi Wegmüller

06 Mar, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Fiction, Graphic Title/Manga/Manwha, Japanese American, Translation, Young Adult Readers

Even as he is pulling his body – mid-escape! – out of the tiny hole that will release him from the infamous Umihotaru Prison, manga artist Kakuta momentarily gets distracted: "Whenever I run into anything that would make good material for a manga, I get totally absorbed"...

The Shifting Grounds of Race: Black and Japanese Americans in the Making of Multiethnic Los Angeles by Scott Kurashige

20 Feb, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Black/African American, Japanese American, Nonfiction

How fitting to finish reading University of Michigan Professor Scott Kurashige's debut title on the 68th annual Day of Remembrance, which marks the anniversary of the signing of Executive Order 9066 by President Franklin D. Roosevelt which led to the imprisonment of 120,000 Americans of...

A Million Shades of Grey by Cynthia Kadohata

25 Dec, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Fiction, Japanese American, Middle Grade Readers, Southeast Asian, Vietnamese, Young Adult Readers

Cynthia Kadohata – who won the top American children's book honor, the Newbery Medal, in 2005 for her debut middle-grade title, Kira-Kira –returns with a heartbreaking story about a young Vietnamese boy and his special relationship with the elephant in his charge. High in the central highlands of war-torn...

Copper by Kazu Kibuishi

21 Dec, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Graphic Title/Manga/Manwha, Japanese American, Middle Grade Readers, Young Adult Readers

From Kazu Kibuishi, the creator of our son's favorite Amuletseries [Amulet 3 is apparently in the final stretch of production, whoo hooo!], comes the "definitive collection" of his webcomic about a boy named Copper and his droll best friend, an adorably spotty dog named Fred. "The...

How We Are Smart by W. Nikola-Lisa, illustrated by Sean Qualls

24 Nov, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Biography, Black/African American, Children/Picture Books, Chinese American, Japanese American, Latina/o/x, Native American/First Nations/Indigenous Peoples, Poetry

Using research originally developed by Harvard psychologist Dr. Howard Gardner about multiple intelligences which was made popular by Dr. Thomas Armstrong, author Nikola-Lisa chooses 12 achievers to show how they were each 'smart' in different, important ways. "Here are eight basic ways people can be...

Horizon Is Calling by Taro Yashima

15 Nov, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Japanese, Japanese American, Memoir, Nonfiction, Young Adult Readers

The remarkable story begun in The New Sun continues in this second volume of Taro Yashima's graphic memoir, a strikingly simple combination of pictures and brief text that capture a man's journey away from his homeland. Long out of print since its 1947 first printing, Horizon...

The New Sun by Taro Yashima

05 Nov, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Japanese, Japanese American, Memoir, Nonfiction, Young Adult Readers

What an amazing, unique, and LUCKY find! First published in 1943 by one of the oldest U.S. publishers, Henry Holt and Company, and in spite of excellent reviews plus a multi-year marketing campaign by both publisher and an early publicist who worked to get the...

Boy Dumplings by Ying Chang Compestine, illustrated by James Yamasaki

23 Sep, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Children/Picture Books, Chinese, Chinese American, Fiction, Japanese American

Missing his usual buckets of left-out food (garbage, unbeknownst to him), a hungry Beijing ghost happens upon a plump little boy out too late with his lantern. The ghost traps his tasty morsel, hurries home, thinking he's going to have a special feast. But the...

The East-West House: Noguchi’s Childhood in Japan by Christy Hale

31 Jul, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Biography, Children/Picture Books, Hapa/Mixed-race, Japanese American, Nonfiction

Born in Los Angeles to a Scotch-Irish American mother, Leonie Gilmour, and a missing Japanese father, the young boy who would grow up to be Isamu Noguchi moved as toddler to Japan to join his estranged father. When Gilmour realized that the older Noguchi already had...

Amulet | Book One: The Stonekeeper and Book Two: The Stonekeeper’s Curse by Kazu Kibuishi

15 Jul, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Fiction, Graphic Title/Manga/Manwha, Japanese American, Middle Grade Readers, Nonethnic-specific

Two years after her father is killed in a car accident, Emily moves with her mother and younger brother Navin to a faraway family home, once owned by her great-grandfather who disappeared decades ago. On the top floor of the neglected house, she finds a...

Tsunami! by Kimiko Kajikawa, illustrated by Ed Young

16 Jun, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Children/Picture Books, Chinese American, Fiction, Japanese, Japanese American

High atop a mountain lives a wealthy, wise, kind old man everyone calls Ojiisan, which means 'grandfather' in Japanese. While the rest of the village gathers to celebrate the annual rice ceremony, Ojiisan chooses to stay home, feeling something is not quite right. His prescience...

The Love Ceiling: A Novel by Jean Davies Okimoto

05 Jun, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Fiction, Hapa/Mixed-race, Japanese American

Just to see what I might find, I went through the books I've included thus far and among almost 400 entries, I couldn't find more than a handful of titles that have an older protagonist. As the over-65 population in the U.S. has been the...

32 Stories: The Complete Optic Nerve Mini-Comics by Adrian Tomine

05 May, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Fiction, Graphic Title/Manga/Manwha, Japanese American, Nonethnic-specific, Young Adult Readers

You've gotta love this boxed set of eight little mini-comic books. As a not-so-cool high school student (the first picture you see once you slide out the contents) who didn't have much of a social life, Adrian Tomine had quite the cool other-life, inking comics...

Johnny Hiro {half asian, all hero} by Fred Chao, with greytones by Dylan Babb and letters and edits by Jesse Post

19 Apr, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Absolute Favorites, Adult Readers, Chinese American, Fiction, Graphic Title/Manga/Manwha, Hapa/Mixed-race, Japanese American, Young Adult Readers

The peaceful slumber of Johnny Hiro and girlfriend Mayumi Murakami in their rent-controlled (run-down) New York City apartment, is rudely interrupted by Gozadilla (that extra 'a' is not a typo), who couldn't make it as a killer monster in Tokyo so has come to New...

In Defense of Our Neighbors: The Walt and Milly Woodward Story by Mary Woodward, foreword by David Guterson

15 Apr, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Japanese American, Nonfiction, Young Adult Readers

If such things are possible, this is actually (almost) a happy book about the Japanese American internment experience, as improbable as that sounds. Yes, the unfortunate Americans of Japanese descent who lived on Bainbridge Island in Puget Sound across from Seattle, Washington – who made up a...

Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet by Jamie Ford

08 Apr, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Chinese American, Fiction, Hapa/Mixed-race, Japanese American

When he deliberately decides he is his own man at age 13, Chinese American Henry Lee pledges to wait forever for Japanese American Keiko Okabe, who is one of the 120,000 innocent Americans of Japanese ancestry imprisoned during World War II. Beyond U.S. borders, war...

Japanese American Resettlement through the Lens: Hikaru Carl Iwasaki and the WRA’s Photographic Section, 1943-1945 by Lane Ryo Hirabayashi, photographs by Hikaru Carl Iwasaki, foreword by Norman Y. Mineta [in Bloomsbury Review]

08 Apr, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Japanese American, Nonfiction, Repost

Amazingly, the War Relocation Authority (WRA), managed to generate some 17,000 photos of Americans of Japanese ancestry who spent the majority of the duration of World War II in prison camps for little more than looking like the enemy. Of these photos, Hirabayashi looks at the...

Erika-san by Allen Say [in Bloomsbury Review]

26 Jan, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Children/Picture Books, Fiction, Japanese, Japanese American, Repost

The prolific, Caldecott Medal-winning Allen Say debuts his latest picture book, as gorgeous as all the others. As a child, Erika falls in love with Japan through a framed picture her grandfather bought as a young man. "I want to go there when I grow...

Famous Suicides of the Japanese Empire by David Mura [in Bloomsbury Review]

01 Nov, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Fiction, Japanese American, Repost

Already an established nonfiction writer and poet, David Mura presents his debut novel, about a not-so-young Japanese American self-proclaimed itinerant historian who must delve into his own family's past – populated by both a...

Outside Beauty by Cynthia Kadohata [in Bloomsbury Review]

01 Nov, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Fiction, Japanese American, Middle Grade Readers, Pan-Asian Pacific American, Repost, Young Adult Readers

Helen Kimura has survived and thrived by using her irresistable beauty to get exactly what she wants. Steely and independent, she's never succumbed to anyone else's expectations but her own. Her four daughters by four different...