Sherri L. Smith (American Wings) movingly imagines the complex life of a teen caught between two warring countries in the piercing historical graphic novel Pearl. Illustrator Christine Norrie (Rise) meticulously documents the girl's harrowing separation in pages awash in hues of blues, emphasizing the somber experiences ahead.
In 1941, 13-year-old Amy sails to Japan--where she's never been--to visit her "sick, maybe even dying" sÅsobo (great-grandmother). She goes alone from Hawaii to Hiroshima, because her parents can't travel with new baby Henry. Amy meets her "new family... across the sea," spending her first three months on her uncle's farm outside Hiroshima. "But time changes all things" and Japan attacks Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941. As war commences, Amy is conscripted as "a monitor girl," translating American radio broadcasts for the Japanese military. Meanwhile, her parents and baby brother are unjustly imprisoned by the U.S. government for being of Japanese descent; Henry dies and Amy won't return home for 11 years.
Smith's dedication cites the "research and stories" of friend Rahna Reiko Rizzuto, a Japanese American writer whose titles center the Japanese American experience. Smith excels in capturing Amy's liminal state, caught between conflicting Japanese and American identities. Norrie, who is of Thai and Scottish descent, wordlessly expands Smith's narrative with her insightful illustrations: most affecting perhaps is Norrie's 20 brutally realistic, near-textless pages documenting atomic destruction and its aftermath. Smith and Norrie's collaborative graphic title eloquently humanizes history with names, faces, and families, to create an intimate testimony of formidable challenges and resolute courage. --Terry Hong