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Kira-Kira by Cynthia Kadohata

Kira-Kira is told in the 1950’s and onwards. It starts off in Iowa, a town in the USA, and then moves to a town called Georgia. There are small flashbacks used in this story to remember Katie’s childhood, but most of the story is told in the present time. The story is told from Katie’s point of view. One of the main characters in this story it Katie, she is a bit mischievous and although that she tries her hardest at school she just can’t seem to get higher than a C. She takes Lynn as a role model, Katie thinks that Lynn is always right and lives by her decisions. Katie has to overcome a challenge when her sister finds a friend; Lynn suddenly becomes closed off from her and starts thinking that whatever Katie does is stupid. Katie can see that her new friend is pure evil but whenever she tries to tell Lynn, Lynn won’t listen to her. Another main character is Lynn. She is the older sister of Katie and a role model to her. She is a very intelligent girl and does extremely well at school. During the story she over comes the challenge of being severely sick, not only does it affect her but it also affects the rest of her family. Because of her sickness the whole family breaks down, they no longer seem like the happy family that they started off as. Before the story had begun, Lynn had taught Katie the word Kira-Kira and told her that it meant “glittering.” The most important part in this story is when Lynn becomes sick, it has a major impact on the family and produces a large amount of responsibility for everyone in the family. She becomes the main part of the family, she is thought of and checked on 24/7 to see if she’s alright. It causes the family to do things that they don’t want to do but it’s for the best. This includes Katie and their little brother Sam had to move out of the room that they shared and sleep on the floor so they wouldn’t become ill and the parents had to work longer hours just so that they could pay for Lynn’s doctors’ appointments. The relationships in this story are strong between Lynn and Katie. Lynn gets into a small relationship with a guy from school called Gregg but ends soon. Most of the relationships in this story are between families. The book made me think about how close families are, when one link in the chain is broken, the others break with it. The current issues that are used in this story are disease, responsibility and poverty. Disease is shown when Lynn becomes sick, responsibility is shown when all of the family had to give up something for Lynn and poverty is shown when Katie was saying about that the family spent all of their money on bags and bags of rice at the start of the year and that it lasts them the whole year. There’s no buying the weeks supply of food at the supermarket like we do, it’s just one big shop at the very start of the year. I found this book enjoyable to read, it got a bit boring at some parts but the majority of it was pleasant. I would describe this book as a good, simple book to read. The most entertaining parts in the story were when the whole family was happy or when Uncle Katsuhisa was playing up, it made me laugh. The author at some points did go into a bit too much detail which let the book down a bit.