Hazel Rochman (Booklist, March 15, 1999 (Vol. 95, No. 14))
On the title page of Say's new picture book, there is a small frame from his Caldecott-winning Grandfather's Journey (1993), a picture of his mother, Masako, as a Japanese American child in California. Say tells her immigrant story: how, when she finished high school in California, her restless, homesick father took the family back to live in his village in Japan. Masako becomes a foreigner in her parents' country, longing for home in San Francisco. Instead of college, she has to go back to high school to learn Japanese. She must learn to be a "proper" Japanese lady. Say's watercolors are quieter in line and color this time, and the text is much longer. Together, they tell an elemental story that will appeal to everyone who feels a stranger at home. The pictures of Masako show her sad and wooden, bound up in a kimono, kneeling on the floor, or walking alone in the empty schoolyard. In a climactic scene, she sits fuming on a park bench next to the stuffy banker with whom an arranged marriage is planned. When she rebels and breaks away, the bright red color of her fitted dress is as startling to us as to the staring villagers. Like many foreigners everywhere, she discovers her home in the city, where she finds work, opportunity, and a husband from an even more diverse background than her own. They speak English ("at last, a real conversation"); they drink their tea with milk and sugar; and when their son, Allen, is born, they speak English to each other and Japanese to him. Both an "ugly duckling" romance and a universal story of leaving home, this is a picture book that will have intense appeal for older readers. Category: Middle Readers. 1999, Houghton/Walter Lorraine, $17. Gr. 4-8.