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Gr 3-Up Life changes drastically for Alice when World War II breaks out. Like many other Japanese Americans living on the West Coast, she and her husband are forced from their home. They choose to work as farm hands rather than be sent to an internment camp. Together, they overcome every indignity and challenge that come their way, and eventually build the largest gladiola bulb farm in the country. Say relates the true story of Alice Sumida in an understated and eloquent style. Alice's childhood love of dancing is deftly woven into t...Log In or Sign Up to Read More

The fortitude of Japanese Americans uprooted from their West Coast homes during World War II takes an unusual form—not surprisingly—in Allen Say's story of Alice, who, as she confides at the outset, loves nothing so much as to dance. After college she marries Mark, and though he isn't "much of a dancer," they are a match in quiet mettle. Assembled for internment, Alice and Mark volunteer to do field work instead, then escape the beet fields by transforming an abandoned farmstead into a productive farm. The war over, no home to return to, they turn (Mark's masterstroke) to growing gladioli: "two hundred acres...of sword...Log In or Sign Up to Read More