She currently lives with her son in California. A great deal of Cynthia's writing inspiration comes from her travels across America: as a child her family lived in Georgia and Arkansas before settling in Chicago, and as an adult, she explored the states on a Greyhound bus. A graduate of the University of Southern California, she has taken graduate courses in writing at the University of Pittsburgh and Columbia University. Her short stories have been published in The New Yorker, Grand Street Magazine, and Ploughshares. She has also published three novels for adults, including The Floating World, for which she was named a Whiting Fellow. At this point, the Takeshima family almost falls apart, but Katie remembers Lynn's special way of looking at life, and finds a way to show her parents that there is always hope and something glittering - kira-kira in their future.Ĭynthia Kadohata is the author of the Newbery Award winner and New York Times bestseller Kira-Kira, her debut novel for children. When she is fourteen, and Katie ten, Lynn becomes ill with lymphoma and ultimately dies. Katie believes that Lynn is a 'genius' and listens as her sister encourages her to look beyond tomorrow. Takeshima work double shifts, Katie and her younger brother, Sammy, are left in the care of their older sister Lynn. The working conditions are almost intolerable at the hatchery, and the Takeshima children experience prejudices at school, but the small community of Japanese families band together and support one another in their daily lives. Uncle Kutsuhisa helps them move into a small apartment complex where other Japanese families live, and they begin a long struggle toward saving money to purchase a house of their own. Katie Takeshima is about to enter kindergarten in the 1950s, when her parents close their Oriental foods grocery store in Iowa and move to Chesterfield, Georgia to work in a chicken hatchery.

Kira-Kira by Cynthia Kadohata