My Brother, My Sister, and I

``What do the other girls know about being hungry, homeless, and missing someone they love so much?'' wonders the 13-year-old protagonist of this fictionalized memoir of Watkins's life as a refugee in post-WW II Japan, a sequel to So Far from the Bamboo Grove . Yoko, with her older sister and brother, lives in a clog factory warehouse and eats off wooden planks--when there is food--until the factory burns down and Yoko's sister must be hospitalized. The Kawashimas face enormous hardships: a bomb has made Yoko deaf in one ear and left her with constant back pain, and she is mercilously tormented in school for her poverty; their mother has died and their father's fate is unknown; charges are brought against them for starting the factory fire, and for murder and theft; finding something to eat requires constant struggle. But through these miseries, the three find blessed comfort in one another--and from others as down-and-out as themselves--and Yoko and her sister eventually emigrate to America. Watkins's first-person narration is beautifully direct and emotionally honest: ``I had absolutely nothing material, but I had a brother and a sister who gave me their love. They were teaching me the value of human life.'' Ages 11-up. (Apr.)