Customer Reviews

Music for Alice

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With Alice, Say puts a face on the experience of the Japanese American's who were relocated during WWII. Alice and her husband, Mark Sumida's, first "relocation" was to a cow stall at the stockyards. From there they "volunteered" to be farmhands. They were sent to the deserts of eastern Oregon were they were encouraged to grow crops as part of the war effort. Mark studied agronomy and tried to improve the soil by growing alfalfa in the off-season. Through hard work, they became the largest gladiola bulb growers in the US after the war. This is a subtle and delicate family story the reminds all Americans of the injustices that Japanese Americans faced during WWII. Karen Woodworth Roman, East Asian Children's Books.

Lucky is the parent?/grandparent? who chooses this book to share with a child. The reader may be swamped with memories (possibly guilty?) of the 1940's when fear and hatred gripped many Americans. After the Pearl Harbor attack, fellow citizens of Nisei background were herded into camps behind barbed wire.

One couple, Mark & Alice Sumida, became farmers instead, a lucky & rare alternative. Alice kept the music of dance in her soul, even when WORK was her whole existence.

Students in grades 4-7 may not often select "picture books" for their reading, nor books about the serious topics covered here by perceptive Allen Say. His is a morality tale . . . of resilience, and of creative thinking. Through his words and exquisite drawings a salute to courage and fortitude is etched upon one's mind.

How can Alice respond to hardships with humor dancing in her eyes? Yet she does. The evidence is shown in three drawings of the mature woman. REVIEWER mcHAIKU SUGGESTS: "Don't miss any opportunity to talk with youth about how Justice often takes flight in wartime."