I love books that provide me a window into another world. Maybe you read The Lightning Queen, by Laura Resau after I recommended it recently—it brought Rom and Mixtec Indian cultures vividly to life.
Today’s book recommendation: Dolls of Hope, by Shirley Parenteau, is another such window into another world. It’s a coming of age story set in Japan.
Based on a little-known historical event in 1926 and 1927 in which American and Japanese children sent each other dolls in hopes of avoiding a future war, Dolls of Hope is told through eleven-year old Chiyo Tamura. Leaving her home in a small mountain village in rural Japan to attend a girls’ school in the city of Tsuchiura, Chiyo becomes the vehicle through which we get to experience a slice of Japanese history and culture.
This is the joy of historical fiction—whether written for children or adults, vivid characters with real needs, hopes, and fears, bring what might otherwise seem dry and distant to colorful life.
Chiyo has to face and overcome some enormous obstacles in her assigned duty: to be the official protector of Emily Grace, one of the American dolls. The universal element of a child loving a doll taps easily into a reader’s heart, and through the story, the author leads us to compassion and understanding for ways that are not our own.
Is this not one of the things we’d love to give to future generations? This ability to take a compassionate view of ways not our own?
I have had the profound experience of living outside my own culture—and I can say without a shadow of a doubt that reading books like this is the next best thing for instilling that world-changing ability.
Dolls of Hope is for any adult and any child who knows what it’s like to love something so totally you would do anything for it. Get on your library’s website to put it on hold.
Happy Reading!
By the way, have you read my latest coming of age story, Becoming Piper Pan? You can order it on Amazon here.