1001 Cranes

In her first book for young readers, Edgar-winner Hirahara examines ruptured relationships and reinforced cultural heritage. Twelve-year-old Angela, the narrator, has been sent to spend the summer with her maternal grandparents outside Los Angeles, originally because her parents need to address the problems in their relationship. She’s uncomfortable around stern Grandma Michi, an expert on things Japanese—unlike her much warmer paternal grandmother, Baa-chan, who even with that name claims to be “100 percent American.” Taught that displays of 1001 paper cranes have become a Japanese-American wedding tradition, Angela is put to work folding cranes for her grandmother’s business. Hirahara writes lyrically of folding (at one stage the paper “resembles a gold kite waiting to be released in the wind”), and as Angela learns that her father has moved out, origami convincingly becomes a “medicine.” Throughout the summer she becomes privy to the secret wounds in other people’s hearts (a tough bride, an older neighbor, her own mother and, finally, Grandma Michi), and sustains a mild injury to her own. Although some story lines resolve too neatly, readers will respond to Angela’s contemporary voice as she discovers the value of evolving traditions. Ages 10–up. (Aug.)