Guest Review with Tarren Young: Sadako and the Thousand Paper Cranes

 Guest Review by Tarren Young of Sadako and the Thousand Paper Cranes by Eleanor Coerr 

This review has two beginnings.

 It started when I was in 6th grade.

1. It started when my son showed an intense interest in WWII, and I knew I had to teach this story when we attempted to homeschool.

 Sadako and the Thousand Paper Cranes by Elenor Coerr is a unique book to say the least. I was first introduced to it when I was in 6th grade during a unit about Japanese culture. Our class had to learn how to make origami paper cranes. I remember being in our reading groups and having to take turns reading aloud, but also eating fruit snacks while holding the book in my hand. Although we had someone come in to try to teach us how to make paper cranes, they are ridiculously hard.

Sadako and the Thousand Paper Cranes is about a girl who says she remembers the bombing of Hiroshima, though her best friend points out that she was only a baby when it happened. Even though Sadako was just a baby, the aftermath of the atomic bomb still had its gnarled fingers of effects reaching through to the future.

At nine, Sadako is the fastest runner in her class and wishes to be picked for the Jr. High running team. Until she starts having dizzy spells. She keeps the dizzy spells from her friends and family until she collapses one day on the school field. She is immediately admitted to the hospital and diagnosed with Leukemia.

Sadako definitely believes in good luck signs and charms, and as such, is in denial for even the first few weeks of being in the hospital, because all she has is a few dizzy spells. But the first time her best friend visits, she brings paper to show her how to make origami paper cranes, as it is believed that if you make a thousand paper cranes, it will help a sick person be granted their wish to be healthy again.

So Sadako sets out to fold one thousand paper cranes.

 

Though the book is only about sixty-seventy pages, depending on which copy the reader has, to my twelve year old self it seemed like a long book. (Perhaps because we were only allowed to read it during our reading groups in class and not at home.)

I didn’t know much about WWII then, and even now, what I do know comes from my eleven-year-old son who is enamored with learning about WWII.

But something stuck in me all these years about this story. Could I tell you exactly what it was? No. The writing is definitely geared towards the grade school level. I read the book in less than an hour and wondered how something so generic in the writing could have been published. But it was published in 1977, and geared towards elementary school kids.

Though I personally feel the writing is dated (because it is) and there isn’t a lot of action, per se, I think what has drawn me in all these years to remember it, is the empathy. It’s geared towards children, because children, I think, understand the concept of peace and empathy more than any adult. At the back of my copy, there are letters to the author about how the book has changed children’s lives. The letters mostly give thanks for writing the story because all the kids ask is that we adults remember the atrocious act of the bombing and beg for peace.

The story also brings a powerful tale of perseverance and hope to the table.

Does Sadako ever finish making her paper cranes? Well, I’m not going to ruin it for you, but, again, I will say, even as Sadako does find herself getting weaker some days, she still manages to make at least one paper crane every day, and on her good days she makes more.

            Sadako is a fighter. She doesn’t want to leave her family. She is determined to make a thousand paper cranes and get better.

            Overall, the writing is a bit generic, but who it is written for is spot on, so I’m going to give this book 4.5 stars for its audience. The overall theme, I’m giving 5 stars, because we could all stand to learn something from the kids in our lives, even if it is just a child in the grocery story line.

            And perhaps that is what has drawn me into it all these years late — that children understand peace, empathy, and grit better than I could any day of the week.