Reading the World (9): Japan

Toby: The Reason I Jump, by Naoki Higashida
 
The Reason I Jump doesn’t have a storyline, it’s a book written by an autistic boy about what it is like to be autistic. He was 13 when he wrote the book. He explains that he learnt to speak with other people by using a board with letters and numbers on, that he could point to, so that he could have a conversation. He says that he can’t control the noises he makes, and he forgets things quite quickly, so he might do things that somebody told him not to do. He’s not trying to be naughty, he’s just forgetful and is trying out new things for him. I would recommend the book to anybody who is a parent or relative to an autistic person, because I think it is really important to understand, although Naoki also explains that not every person who is autistic is the same. I think it is really important that Naoki has written “The Reason I Jump”, because it is written by somebody who is autistic, rather than somebody who is not autistic trying to explain what it’s like. It would be a great book to have in a school library, and I also like that it was written by a child.

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Sabine: The Nakano Thrift Shop, by Hiromi Kawakami

I read other reviews about this book, many very positive, and one that calls it "mundane", as though that were inherently negative. Hitomi is a young woman who works at Nakano's Thrift Shop - not an antique centre with inherently valuable items, but the kind that sells the results from estate sales. Hitomi enters a complex relationship with Takeo, the other employee, not quite a love story, more a series of encounters, some romantic, some confusing, some, yes, mundane. But it is this mundaneness that is an art form in and of itself, looking at the lives Hitomi, Takeo, Nakano, and their friends and customer, the lives of "ordinary" people who wriggle along as best they can, forming connections, growing estranged, and re-connecting.

This is a gentle book. It never shouts, although, on occasion, there are sections that remind the reader that the main character is a young, contemporary woman, which forms a contrast to the general "ticking along" of the story. To me, the items in the shop are metaphors for the experiences and connections of the characters - attributing value to them is personal, and sometimes, this value isn't recognised until much later.

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Bonus Books (read when Toby was younger):

The Big Wave (Pearl S. Buck), read when Toby was 6 years old (repost from www.writingtotheworld.com)

Toby says: The Big Wave was about scariness, happiness and sadness. There was a little boy called Kino and his friend Jiya. They lived on a volcano by the sea. One day, a big wave came and smashed people's houses, and people died. Jiya's Mum, Dad and brother died, so Jiya went to live in Kino's house. The boys were happy before the big wave came, but then came the big wave and they were sad.  Sometimes, things are scary, but you still do them. Sometimes, even just living can be scary, but if you have friends, then you might not be so scared, but you might still be a bit scared. 

Mummy says: This is a beautifully written story about friendship through hardship. It explores grief and sadness, and although it is short and covers quite a bit of ground, it reads very calm and "quiet". A lovely find, and I'm sure we'll return to it.

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Sadako and the Thousand Paper Cranes, by Eleanor Coerr (read when Toby was 6 years old, re-post from www.writingtotheworld.com)

Toby says: It was really sad. Sadako was a little girl, and she had to go to the doctors. She had leukaemia from the atom bomb. She was folding a thousand paper cranes so that she could get better again, but she actually died. I liked the book, it was a sad book, though. There is a statue of Sadako in the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park in Japan.

Mummy says: This was another book that had stayed with me since childhood, and as a result of it, I have been folding paper cranes - out of receipts in restaurants, scraps of paper while we wait somewhere...Toby had been playing with these since he was tiny, and I always told him that I learnt how to fold them because of a book I'd read as a child. What I didn't realise was one important change the author made - when we researched the book, it turned out that Sadako actually managed to fold a thousand paper cranes, but died anyway. In the book, she falls short of her target, and her class mates finish the remaining cranes, so that she gets buried with a thousand paper cranes. 
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