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Summary
Summary
In 1977 suburban Chicago, Kyle runs wild with his friends and learns to shoplift from the local convenience store. In 1941 Berkeley, the Himitsu family is forced to leave their home for a Japanese-American internment camp, and their teenage son must decide how to deal with his new life. But though these boys are growing up in wildly different places and times, their lives intersect in more ways than one, as they discover compassion, learn loyalty, and find renewal in the most surprising of places.
Kevin C. Pyle's evocative images bring to life a story of unlikely ties across space and generations.
Author Notes
Kevin C. Pyle is the author and illustrator of Blindspot and Katman , and his work has appeared in the Village Voice , The New York Times , and The New Yorker . He lives in New Jersey.
Reviews (4)
School Library Journal Review
Gr 7 Up-In 1978, Kyle, a rebellious kid in a new town, gets in over his head trying to impress his friends by shoplifting. Decades earlier, young Ken Himitsu is angry about being incarcerated in Manzanar, an internment camp where thousands of Japanese Americans were forced to relocate during World War II. The two plots intertwine in a surprising way as the boys experience parallel feelings of frustration in coping with unwanted circumstances, and both ultimately gain wisdom from an elder. Pyle's expressive artwork draws a visual distinction between the stories: the 1978 sections are illustrated with solid lines and shades of blue, while the World War II story line is rendered in sepia tones and soft brushstrokes, evocative of vintage photographs and Japanese ink wash paintings. Though Ken's story, told only in images, presents a well-researched picture of life in Manzanar, wordless storytelling might not be the ideal way to introduce this complex topic. An excellent historical note at the end of the book provides necessary context, but readers unfamiliar with the period are unlikely to have the patience to stick with a story they don't understand. Still, even if the specifics elude some teens, the essential emotions shine through. This graphic novel makes a powerful statement about respect, gratitude, and forgiveness. Readers may be compelled to learn more about the events that inspired the story, making it a good companion for nonfiction works such as Jeanne Wakatsuki Houston's Farewell to Manzanar (Houghton Mifflin, 2002) or Heather C. Lindquist's Children of Manzanar (Heyday Bks., 2012).-Allison Tran, Mission Viejo Library, CA (c) Copyright 2012. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Publisher's Weekly Review
Two teenage boys separated by time and culture are connected by shared experiences. Kyle is young and bored with his life in late 1970s suburban Chicago. Having recently moved there, he makes new friends and turns to vandalism and shoplifting to keep his life exciting. In the early 1940s Ken Himitsu, the son of Japanese immigrants living in Berkeley, Calif., is sent along with the rest of his family to a forced relocation camp after the outbreak of WWII. Ken, frustrated with the conditions, turns to theft to get the food and supplies that are kept from them. Pyle shifts between each story, differentiating between them by coloring styles. Ken's story, told without the use of text and with a heavily inked visual texture, is particularly striking. The story builds slowly, with the connection between the two gradually revealed. But the touching way in which Ken learns responsibility through the necessity of stealing for others while Kyle learns responsibility after being punished for selfish theft is accomplished quite well. Pyle has created a quiet, contemplative, and effective glimpse into two distant in time yet similar lives. Ages 12-up. (Mar.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Horn Book Review
In this graphic novel, two stories unfold in alternating threads. One is the wordless story, rendered in sepia tones, of a young Japanese American boy and his day-to-day experiences in an internment camp. The other, washed in two tones of blue, is the more contemporary tale of a wayward young boy whose bad behavior escalates until he is caught stealing from a store owned by a Japanese American man. His punishment involves working weekends at the store, and as he fulfills his service he comes to respect the owner, who is gradually revealed to be the youth of the first narrative strand. Moreover, that story culminates with an experience that gives the man a profound sense of empathy for this boy's errant behavior and causes him to eschew an angry, bitter reaction in favor of a more compassionate one that will lead the boy away from a path of juvenile delinquency. Indeed, the title -- Take What You Can Carry -- speaks both to the literal act of stealing, with its attendant burden of shame and responsibility, and to the more metaphorical journey of forgiveness and redemption. jonathan hunt (c) Copyright 2012. The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Booklist Review
Illinois, 1978: a wash of cool blue is the shade of Kyle's boyhood adventures, destroying property on a construction site and performing dangerous stunts to impress his friends. It is his recurring shoplifting sprees at a local store that finally land him in jail. His father, however, arranges with the shop owner for Kyle to work off his debt at the store as punishment. California, 1941: splashes of muddy brown delineate the life of a Japanese boy growing up in an American WWII internment camp, struggling with all the anger and oppression that entails. Wordless and with less overt narrative thrust, this tale proves less compelling than Kyle's slice-of-boyhood story, which touches on the same themes of boisterous destruction and consequences that Pyle explored in Blindspot (2007). The stories do eventually wind together to suggest that community is to be found where you least expect it. Pyle's art, which has appeared in the New York Times and the New Yorker, offers an expressive view of the past that is both nostalgic and harshly realistic.--Karp, Jesse Copyright 2010 Booklist
