Helpful Score: 7
This was a wonderful book! Character development excellent. Plot is unusual; keeps you enthralled. Amazing that this kind of thing took place in this country; and the potential is there for it to happen again. I hope we all guard against that.
Helpful Score: 6
This is a great book with the story told by a 12 year old Colorado farm girl during WWII. Missing both her sister who has gone to the city to work in the war factory and her brother who has enlisted, Rennie befrends several Japanese who have come to work on her fathers farm. Tallgrass, the farm next to her family farm has been turned into a Japanese internment camp and we see the life of the Japanese in the camps through Rennie's eyes. The story depicts the prejudice and fear of the small town people and how Rennie's family fights these prejudices. I really enjoyed the story and the historical content and had a hard time putting the book down.
Helpful Score: 4
I thought that this book was pretty good. I felt it was very similar to To Kill a Mockingbird, just I different time, place and race. Being from Colorado it was fun to read about places that I know of. I was thinking there was going to be more about how they were treated at the camp and instead of more about the family. I don't know much about what happened with the camps and was hoping to increase my knowledge about the subject but with some fiction.
I would recommend this book to other people and would read more from the author.
I would recommend this book to other people and would read more from the author.
Helpful Score: 3
This is a touching story told from the perspective of a 13 year old girl growing up on the Kansas plains during WWII. Her life is changed when a Japanese internment camp is set up just down the road from her family's farm. Over the course of the book she learns about strength of character, right and wrong, and takes on more responsibility than she should need. I really enjoyed the perspective from which this book is written which helped certain events to unfold in the reader's mind. There were surprises that kept the book going while giving a glimpse of what daily life was like during WWII.
Helpful Score: 1
I loved this book! I never knew the extent of the Japanese internment camps and found it eye-opening. I love Sandra Dallas' style of writing. This is an easy read of a very heavy subject matter.
Helpful Score: 1
I grew up in CO but had not heard of the Tallgrass camp. I have always been intrigued by the interment of the Japanese Americans during WW II and I found this book to be well written with what is likely a good interpretation of life for the people in that area. The book is a good page turner.
Helpful Score: 1
I grew up very near the Mansanard camp in Kern Co., California. We used to drive there when I was a kid to pick black walnuts from their former orchard. This book was well written and the story well told of another Japanese interment camp in Colorado and all the prejudice and fear engendered by the camp.
A story of a salt of the earth, sugar beet farming family in Colorado, set during the time of WWII. It's a story of how many are brought together during times of difficulty and also of prejudice against the Japanese Americans who are being held in a camp near their small town. This book read a little too Little House on the Prarie style at times. I would have preferred a more in depth look at the Japanese characters.
Tallgrass was the name of a camp for Japanese internment in Colorado during WWII. The story centers around one family in the town and is narratted by the last child living at home, a daughter. How the town feels about the Japanese, how they react to the camp, people from town serving and some dying in the war are a few of the issues delt with in this book. The son of the family is eventually listed as a prisoner of war as the older daughter is working in a munitions plant in Denver. The mother is dealing with a heart issue which causes much of the work of the farm to fall to the young girl. Their family ends up hiring some of the young men from the camp to help with the planting and the harvesting of sugar beets, and a young woman to help with the household chores. Also within the story of the town is sposal abuse, unwed mothers, crowd violence, prejudice, rape and a murder. The young girl comes of age during this time with a more accurate view of life. The information on the internment camps, the Japanese, views about the war and relationships in small towns were all very interesting.This definitely felt like young adult fiction to me which I did not realize when I purchased the book. I also felt the ending was quite abrupt as well as too neatly wrapped up.
This is a very interesting book from so many angles. Told by a young teen narrator makes the example of man's inhumanity to man by establishing a Japanese internment camp after Pearl Harbor for American Japanese even more obscene. The reactions of the people in the town near the camp surely reflect what would happen today in a similar situation - sadly, there is more anger toward those in the internment camp than compassion for their situation. The narrator's family demonstrates kindness and understanding even in the face of their own fears about their son's capture by the Germans while serving in Europe. This narrator learns a great deal about people's characters in observing their reactions to those in the camp. I highly recommend this book.
