Audiobooks Narrated by Chieko Hidaka

Halfway There: A Graphic Memoir of Self-Discovery

"A poignant young adult graphic memoir that follows one teen's year abroad in Japan, as she seeks to reconcile both sides of her biracial identity. Christine has always felt she is just half: Half American, half Japanese. As a biracial Japanese American who was born in Tokyo but raised in the US, she knows all too well what it's like to be a part of two different worlds but never feeling as though you belong to either. Now on the brink of adulthood, Christine decides it's time to return to the place she once called home. So she sets forth on a year abroad in Tokyo, believing that this is where she truly belongs. After years of feeling like an outsider, now she will finally be complete.  Except…Tokyo isn't the answer she thought it would be. Instead of fitting in, Christine finds herself a fish out of water, as being half of two cultures isolates her in ways she'd never imagined. All she can do is try to stay afloat for the rest of the year-still figuring out who she is, what she wants in life, and whether she'll ever truly be more than halfway there.    Author-illustrator Christine Mari explores what it means to lose and find yourself in this moving narrative of belonging and home. "

Christine Mari (Author), Alice Wen, Chieko Hidaka, Sara Matsui Colby, Siho Ellsmore (Narrator)

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The Very Unfortunate Wish of Melony Yoshimura

"2024 Oregon Book Award winner In this magical and chilling Coraline-esque retelling of the Japanese folktale “The Melon Princess and the Amanjaku,' one girl must save herself—and her loved ones—from a deceitful demon she befriended. Melony Yoshimura’s parents have always been overprotective. They say it’s because a demonic spirit called the Amanjaku once preyed upon kids back in Japan, but Melony suspects it’s just a cautionary tale to keep her in line. So on her twelfth birthday, Melony takes a chance and wishes for the freedom and adventure her parents seem determined to keep her from. As if conjured by her wish, the Amanjaku appears. At first, Melony is wary. If this creature is real, are the stories about its destructive ways also real? In no time, however, the Amanjaku woos Melony with its ability to shape-shift, grant wishes, and understand her desire for independence. But what Melony doesn’t realize is that the Amanjaku’s friendship has sinister consequences, and she quickly finds every aspect of her life controlled by the demon’s trickery—including herself. Melony is determined to set things right, but will she be able to before the Amanjaku turns her life, her family, and her community upside down?"

Waka T. Brown (Author), Chieko Hidaka (Narrator)

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While I Was Away

"Named one of New York Public Library's & Bank Street's Best Books of the Year! The Farewell meets Erin Entrada Kelly's Blackbird Fly in this empowering middle grade memoir from debut author Waka T. Brown, who takes readers on a journey to 1980s Japan, where she was sent as a child to reconnect to her family’s roots. When twelve-year-old Waka’s parents suspect she can’t understand the basic Japanese they speak to her, they make a drastic decision to send her to Tokyo to live for several months with her strict grandmother. Forced to say goodbye to her friends and what would have been her summer vacation, Waka is plucked from her straight-A-student life in rural Kansas and flown across the globe, where she faces the culture shock of a lifetime. In Japan, Waka struggles with reading and writing in kanji, doesn’t quite mesh with her complicated and distant Obaasama, and gets made fun of by the students in her Japanese public-school classes. Even though this is the country her parents came from, Waka has never felt more like an outsider. If she’s always been the “smart Japanese girl” in America but is now the “dumb foreigner” in Japan, where is home...and who will Waka be when she finds it?"

Waka T. Brown (Author), Chieko Hidaka (Narrator)

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