Kim Andrews shuts out her history teacher, who is telling the class about the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. She is thinking about her ancestors. Kim's mother is American, but her father, who died before she was born, was Japanese. Realizing that she knows nothing about an important part of her heritage, the teenager embarks on a search for her father's Japanese relatives in California. As she meets an aunt and grandmother who are from another time and culture, she learns that she is both Kim Andrews and Kimi Yogushi. And she begins to know what it means to be Japanese-American. Kim/Kimi poignantly depicts a young woman's investigation of her cultural history. Honestly facing the mistreatment of Japanese-Americans during World War II and the prejudices that still exist in many parts of the United States, Hadley Irwin skillfully dramatizes the conflicts that are often part of a multicultural background.
Twelve-year-old Trevor Frederick Ackerman can't stand another summer with his confusing tangle of stepparents, stepbrothers, and stepsisters. So instead, his mother sends him to a remote area of New England to stay with two elderly aunts. As the plane takes off, Freddie feels everything familiar slip away. Despite his initial fears, he finds that he is comfortable in the eccentric aunts' rambling house. Soon, he has made a new friend in the nearby village and, in a mysterious book, he discovers something surprising and wonderful. Hadley Irwin, also author of Kim/Kimi is really the popular writing team of Lee Hadley and Ann Irwin. Together, they create stories that explore the changes young people face as they move into adulthood. The Original Freddie Ackerman, filled with gentle wit, was chosen by School Library Journal as a Best Book.
