Fans pick 100 books like Kira-Kira

Two African American brothers spend their summer in rural Virginia while their parents navigate a rough patch in their marriage. Genie, 11, and Ernie, 13, get to know their blind grandfather who has a special room filled with plants and songbirds. I identified with Genie, a worrier who likes to pose questions in his notebook. As the two brothers respond differently to their grandfather’s announcement that a brave man learns to shoot a gun at 14, Reynolds is also asking readers to consider what it means to be brave and how we should define family. I loved the themes and vivid setting of the book. As someone who visited a grandparent in a small, rural town each summer, I identified with the boys’ sense that they have travelled not just a state but a whole world away from home.

12-year-old Catherine’s feelings toward her younger, autistic brother are complicated. She’s protective of him and also appears to be embarrassed by his behaviour. All she wants is a “normal” life. When she becomes friends with a paraplegic boy she’s forced to think about what “normal” really means. This book is hopeful, humourous, thoughtful, and explores what it means to interact with someone who is neurodivergent. The author is the mother of a child with autism and the complex relationships and friendships in the book felt real and captured the mixed-up emotions of middle-graders. 

In this book, a sister and brother escape the horrors of suburban Connecticut and take refuge in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, where they discover an art mystery that leads them to a wealthy surrogate grandmother. Beyond the iconic setting, this story has an irresistible only-in-New York feeling to it, so that you can’t help believing it all might have really happened, or still could happen.

What could illustrate sibling tensions better than a book set in a car during a road trip? Raina always wanted a baby sister—until Amara arrived. Now, as she embarks on a weeks-long car trip she remembers what a difficult baby and toddler Amara was, and the ongoing frustration of sharing her parents’ attention Before the graphic memoir is done, the two sisters bond. This is the second in the Smile series, but you can jump in here if you like without getting confused. The art is great, and the story is heart-warming without being sticky-sweet. It brought back memories of road trips with my sisters, sharing snacks, and fighting for space in the back of the station wagon.

Yoko is a little Japanese cat who goes to school and encounters all kinds of fellow students who are very different from her. She brings a lunch packed with sushi and her classmates turn up their noses and make fun of her. Thankfully, Yoko has a great teacher and she uses this experience to teach the students about culture. They have a potluck lunch and everyone brings something. Even the bullies of the class bring something that might seem strange and unfamiliar to Yoko. In the end, they learn that we are all different and it’s our differences that make us fun.

I love this story because kindergarten can be very frightening to young children. Their brains are growing exponentially learning to count and read and sort colors etc… but they are also learning new social skills and that can be difficult to navigate, especially when it comes to food,… show more.

The Eagles were a collection of Japanese American youth interned, with their families, at a relocation camp at the base of Heart Mountain, outside of Cody, Wyoming. In the fall of 1943, they embarked upon an undefeated high school football season, although their triumphs were tempered by the injustice of their families’ incarceration and, ironically, the looming threat of the graduating seniors being drafted into the same military that guarded the perimeter of their camp.  Pearson’s is a disturbing, but ultimately uplifting, look at a dark chapter in America’s history.

Sujata Massey is Indian and German. She has written a whole series of books set in Japan or featuring Japanese characters. This is her seventh featuring investigator Rei Shimura, and is set in Washington DC's restaurant world. Shimura's task: find a Japanese war bride who disappeared 30 years earlier. I love Rei Shimura’s wry humor and intelligence. My husband founded, and we owned, The Safe House, an espionage-theme restaurant in Milwaukee, so this book resonated with my experience.

This book features Bill Manbo’s original photographs from the Heart Mountain incarceration camp, weaved in with the historical narrative of the camp and the time period.

What is remarkable about the photos is that they are not part of government propaganda but depictions of everyday events by an amateur photographer. Moreover, inmates weren’t supposed to have cameras in camp, so Manbo’s photos are also an act of resistance.

Since I’m always on a quest to really “feel” history, I love how these photos bring me that much closer to the people and the place. Eric Muller and others’ writings provide useful contextualization to both the art and the era. 

Having grown up as one of few Asians in my high school, I didn’t really prioritize defining my identity as a Japanese-American. All I really cared about was blending in. But after reading this wonderful book, I realized being connected to my ethnicity and culture was both important and natural.

Olivia, the Japanese-American protagonist, spends her days with her family, traveling from Oregon to Arkansas in search of work. The “floating world” is one of temporariness and fleeting observations, like listening to a neighbor playing records or noting the color of a waitress’s painted nails. Olivia deals with tensions within her family as well as the racism they encounter on the road.

For me, this book helped me realize that I could honor the specificities of who I am against a general backdrop of the community within which I existed.

This book explores family history and heritage, but this time with time travel. The art here is gorgeous, and I love how Kiku discovers more about her family’s legacy of resilience and strength through her time travel.