1.I would recommend this book to students in higher level elementary school.
2.This book explains what it was like to have relatives that died in internment camps during WW2. It follows a family and the traditions they do when visiting their relatives graves that died while in the internment camp.
3.I wouldn't recommend using this to teach students, for it is written by a person whose ancestors did not experience this situation.She is writing from an outside perspective.

It is a good example of a historical fiction because it is a real historical event.
In 1972, the Iwasakis go back to visit the camp where the father was interned for three and a half year. The Iwasaki family is fictional, but there are thousands of American citizens of Japanese ancestry with the same kinds of memories.
It is a sad and unfair event for the Japanese American. However, like the story said,"Sometimes in the end there is no right or wrong. It is just a thing that happened long years ago. A thing that cannot be changed." It is good to tell the historical event to children. The perspective of history is meaningful and teaches us to move on.
Good for all ages ( )

Eve Bunting writes books on serious topics and issues. This book is about a father taking his family to a camp where his grandfather died in WW2. He shares his dads story with them so that his fathers story and the dark moment in history will be remembered. Laura is young but she understands. She listens to the stories and leaves her grandfather a neckerchief that was a symbol that he was a true American. ( )

I enjoy So Far from the Sea is an interesting book and utilizes the characters and rich history behind the issues that is often overlooked. Making the story told through a first-person narrator, Laura, makes the story more effective and allows the despair and pain of Japanese internment to resonate.
Lara’s point of view is that of a child that must leave her grandfather’s grave at an internment camp. As this child tries to imagine her father and grandfather in the camp, the powerful images that Laura imagines are translated to the reader well due to her age. A young child should be innocent and pay homage to their grandfather that lived a normal life; but instead she must pay homage by imagining her father being young and inside of barbed wire and towers. Laura’s age and innocence that she is bereft of makes the images and injustice more powerful to the reader. The big idea of this book is that family is more powerful than anything and the era of Japanese internment or any internment of a people without just cause is injustice in its most blatant and terrible form. ( )

While teaching the reader about the history of Japanese internment in America, this story also teaches about forgiveness. Through the story, the daughter, Laura, is upset because her mother, father, grandparents, aunts and uncles were put in camps in America when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor. Her father tells her it is just something that happened, because of a chain of events, and there's nothing to do now but let it go and forgive. The story seems to be about forgiveness, because even as they are visiting the grave of their grandfather, they aren't holding any anger towards the internment camp where their grandfather died, or the Americans for interning them. They consider themselves American, and say what happened was wrong, but move forward as a strong, united family. This story can show a reader that even when someone treats you horribly, to look at why they might be doing so and to try to understand their reasoning. Not only understand, but forgive once all is done and over with. ( )