Red Berries, Blue Sky, White Clouds: Kids' Book on the Wartime Internment of Japanese Americans

A move from California to Colorado takes place in the new book “Red Berries White Clouds Blue Sky” by Sandra Dallas — but it is certainly nothing to look forward to, especially if you're a kid.

Twelve-year-old Tomi Itano hoped that her little brother Hiro wouldn’t notice the hurtful word on the 
door of the grocery store. It made her cringe that he was 7 years old and could read the word “Japs.”

It was 1942, and the Japanese had just bombed Pearl Harbor. America entered World War II soon after, which caused much discrimination for Japanese-Americans like the Itanos. Tomi, Hiro and their older brother Roy had been born in America, but that didn’t seem to matter to their friends and neighbors.

Mom said “Shikata ga nai” (“It cannot be helped.”). Pop kept working on the strawberry farm where they all lived — until the day the FBI showed up, arrested him and took him away to prison camp. Shortly afterward, the rest of the Itanos packed a single suitcase and were forced to move to a relocation camp.

Ellis, Colo., was nothing at all like California, and Tallgrass Camp was nothing like the strawberry farm. Tomi’s family lived in a barracks surrounded by barbed wire in an area that didn’t seem like it would grow anything. There was a school and a community hall where Mom taught other Japanese-American women to sew, but the Itanos didn’t enjoy living there — especially without Pop. Still, they made friends and started new projects, and things settled into a pattern of normalcy.

Then the one thing Tomi wanted more than anything finally happened — but it made her mad and bitter. The Itanos were as American as anybody, so why were they treated as if they weren’t? She couldn’t stop being angry, until her brother asked her to do something very important. 

Japanese Intermnent Camp in US

Dallas says:

I really traveled alongside these characters, rooting for them and feeling for their struggles. I know that all readers, young or more advanced, will experience something similar.

In addition to explaining the historical facts, Dallas says in her afterword that years ago she met a couple of Japanese-American journalists who’d spent the war years in relocation camps, and their stories were the basis for part of this book. It will be interesting for readers to root for and identify with Tomi, a regular American girl. 

Red Berries White Clouds Blue Sky" by Sandra Dallas

c.2014, Sleeping Bear Press $15.95 / $16.95 Canada:  216 pages

November 15 Marks America Recycles Day

 A most important and noble cause marks tomorrow, November 15, 3013.  The purpose of the day is pretty straightforward.  Keeping American Beautiful wants to convince Americans to quit throwing away things they no longer need or want and opt for recycling them instead.  Bella and Britt in Bella Saves the Beach  (Guardian Angel Publishing.) are happy to help!

Every  year Americans create about 240 million tons of solid wastes - about 4 1/2 pounds per person each day! Much of this waste ends up in landfills or is incinerated, but most of it can be recycled. Recycling is taking a product or material that is no longer being used and turning it into a raw material that can be used for something else.

 It is an easy but important way of helping to protect our environment from the pollution that our wastes can cause. Thanks to the environmental movement, recycling has spread across the country and around the world.

Until modern times, recycling was the normal way of life. During World War II for example, when the nation needed to conserve resources at home, 25% of all wastes were recycled. But by 1960 less than 8% of our wastes were recycled.

 Today, 32% of wastes are recycled in America and there are more than 10,000 curbside recycling programs in America! Each year over 60 million tons of wastes are recycled instead of ending up in landfills or incinerators. The EPA has set a goal for America to reach 35% recycling.

You can help save resources by practicing the 3 R's - Reduce, Reuse and Recycle:

Reduce: Precycle - 1/3 of all garbage is packaging - buy products with minimal or recycled packaging; say no to a bag when purchasing a small item.

Reuse: Many things can be reused before throwing them out.

Recycling: Take the National Recycling Coalition's Recycling pledge: 

- I pledge to find out what materials I can and cannot recycle in my community;
- I pledge to lead by example in my neighborhood by recycling;
- I pledge to recycle batteries, cell phones and other electronic waste.
- I pledge to email my elected officials to ask them to increase funding for my community's recycling programs.

- I pledge to tell five friends that recycling is the easiest thing they can do to slow global warming.

Recycling Day, on November 15, is an important opportunity to educate people about the importance of recycling for our environment, and how each of us can make a difference for a better world by recycling.

On the Earth 911 site (http://earth911.org/recycling/) you can locate the nearest recycling center for disposing of items like paint and batteries.

Who Is Your Favorite Nobel Prize Winning Author?

Who is your favorite Nobel Prize winning author? The Nobel Prize for Literature website listed the “Most Popular Literature Laureates” on its website, and some of the names might surprise you.

This blogger's favorite winner is Winston Churchill's The Second World War, given in 1953.  Run down the list to see if there is one that draws you.

Since 1901, 105 Nobel Prizes in Literature have been awarded to 109 laureates. The average age of these laureates is 64 years old and only 12 women have received the prestigious prize.

Below, is the the entire list–complete with links to their biographies at the Nobel Prize website.

Year	Author	Famous for
1901	Sully Prudhomme	Parnassian poetry
1902	Theodor Mommsen	History of Rome
1903	Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson	Synnöve Solbakken
1904	José Echegaray	El gran Galeoto
1904	Frédéric Mistral	MIRÈIO
1905	Henryk Sienkiewicz	Quo vadis
1906	Giosuè Carducci	Rime Nuove (New Rhymes) , Odi Barbare (Barbarian Odes)
1907	Rudyard Kipling	Jungle Books
1908	Rudolf Eucken	The Problem of Human Life as Viewed by the Great Thinkers
1909	Selma Lagerlöf	The Wonderful Adventures of Nils
1910	Paul Heyse	Children of the World
1911	Maurice Maeterlinck	The Blue Bird
1912	Gerhart Hauptmann	Die Weber
1913	Rabindranath Tagore	Gitanjali
1915	Romain Rolland	Le Théâtre du peuple
1916	Verner von Heidenstam	Karolinerna
1917	Henrik Pontoppidan	Lucky Peter
1917	Karl Gjellerup	The German Student
1919	Carl Spitteler	Olympian Spring
1920	Knut Hamsun	Growth of the Soil
1921	Anatole France	The Crime of Sylvestre Bonnard
1922	Jacinto Benavente	The Bonds of Interest
1923	William Butler Yeats	The Wild Swans at Coole
1924	Wladyslaw Reymont	Chłopi
1925	George Bernard Shaw	Arms and the Man
1926	Grazia Deledda	Anime Oneste
1927	Henri Bergson	The Two Sources of Morality and Religion
1928	Sigrid Undset	Kristin Lavransdatter
1929	Thomas Mann	Buddenbrooks
1930	Sinclair Lewis	Arrowsmith
1931	Erik Axel Karlfeldt	Arcadia Borealis
1932	John Galsworthy	The Forsyte Saga
1933	Ivan Bunin	The Gentleman from San Francisco
1934	Luigi Pirandello	Lumie di Sicilia
1936	Eugene O'Neill	Anna Christie
1937	Roger Martin du Gard	Les Thibault
1938	Pearl Buck	The Good Earth
1939	Frans Eemil Sillanpää	People in the Summer Night
1944	Johannes V. Jensen	Poems 1906
1945	Gabriela Mistral	Piececitos de Niño
1946	Hermann Hesse	Siddhartha
1947	André Gide	Fruits of the Earth
1948	T.S. Eliot	The Waste Land
1949	William Faulkner	The Sound and the Fury
1950	Bertrand Russell	A History of Western Philosophy
1951	Pär Lagerkvist	Fruits of the Earth
1952	François Mauriac	Thérèse
1953	Winston Churchill	The Second World War
1954	Ernest Hemingway	The Old Man and the Sea
1955	Halldór Laxness	Independent People
1956	Juan Ramón Jiménez	Platero and I
1957	Albert Camus	The Plague
1958	Boris Pasternak	Doctor Zhivago
1959	Salvatore Quasimodo	Giorno Dopo Giorno
1960	Saint-John Perse	Exile
1961	Ivo Andric	Anxieties
1962	John Steinbeck	The Grapes of Wrath
1963	Giorgos Seferis	Turning Point
1964	Jean-Paul Sartre	Nausea
1965	Mikhail Sholokhov	And Quiet Flows the Don
1966	Nelly Sachs	Eli: A Mystery Play of the Sufferings of Israel
1966	Shmuel Agnon	The Bridal Canopy
1967	Miguel Angel Asturias	The President
1968	Yasunari Kawabata	Snow Country
1969	Samuel Beckett	Waiting for Godot
1970	Alexandr Solzhenitsyn	One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich
1971	Pablo Neruda	Canto General
1972	Heinrich Böll	Billiards at Half-past Nine
1973	Patrick White	Riders in the Chariot
1974	Harry Martinson	Aniara
1974	Eyvind Johnson	Here is Your Life!
1975	Eugenio Montale	Occasions
1976	Saul Bellow	The Adventures of Augie March
1977	Vicente Aleixandre	Shadow of Paradise
1978	Isaac Bashevis Singer	Gimpel the Fool
1979	Odysseus Elytis	Worthy It Is
1980	Czeslaw Milosz	The Captive Mind
1981	Elias Canetti	Crowds and Power
1982	Gabriel García Márquez	One Hundred Years of Solitude
1983	William Golding	Lord of the Flies
1984	Jaroslav Seifert	The Plague Column
1985	Claude Simon	The Flanders Road
1986	Wole Soyinka	The Bacchae of Euripides
1987	Joseph Brodsky	Love Song
1988	Naguib Mahfouz	Chitchat on the Nile
1989	Camilo José Cela	The Hive
1990	Octavio Paz	Collected Poems, 1957–1987
1991	Nadine Gordimer	The Conservationist
1992	Derek Walcott	Omeros
1993	Toni Morrison	Beloved
1994	Kenzaburo Oe	A Personal Matter
1995	Seamus Heaney	The Spirit Level
1996	Wislawa Szymborska	Some Like Poetry
1997	Dario Fo	Archangels Don't Play Pinball
1998	José Saramago	Baltasar and Blimunda
1999	Günter Grass	The Tin Drum
2000	Gao Xingjian	One Man's Bible
2001	V. S. Naipaul	In a Free State
2002	Imre Kertész	Fatelessness
2003	J. M. Coetzee	Disgrace
2004	Elfriede Jelinek	The Piano Teacher
2005	Harold Pinter	The Birthday Party
2006	Orhan Pamuk	The Black Book
2007	Doris Lessing	The Grass is Singing
2008	Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clézio	The Interrogation
2009	Herta Müller	The Land of Green Plums

*This information is also provided at GalleyCat by Jason Boog.

Goodybe to 'Encyclopedia Brown' Author, Donald Sobol

Donald Sobol, author of the children's book series "Encyclopedia Brown," has died at the age of  87.

He was born in New York and served in World War II. After attending Oberlin College, he worked as a journalist in New York, then left to pursue a writing career in 1951. Although he was having some success, his "Encyclopedia Brown" manuscript was turned down two dozen times before it found a publisher.

Persevere, and don’t take no for an answer. And if you really think [the publishers] are right, then look over the manuscript and polish it a little more.

The first book, "Encyclopedia Brown: Boy Detective" was published by T. Nelson in 1963. Incredibly popular, Sobol was soon following up with more stories about the 10-year-old Leroy "Encyclopedia" Brown and his partner, tomboy Sally Kimball. Eventually, there would be almost 30 books in the series, which has never gone out of print.

Sobol, who tried to remain anonymous, did not give
television interviews and preferred not to be photographed.  In the Oberlin Almnmi Magazine (2011), he said:

I am very content with staying in the background and letting the books do the talking.

So we say goodbye to one of the masters of the chapter book series.  I remember his books fondly from my days of teaching third and fourth grades.  His books were particularly favorites of boys, although I certainly remember girls having fun with his gentle mysteries as well.  Thank you, Mr. Sobol.

Coral Sea to be Home to World's Largest Marine Park

In these days of environmental change and general concern about the state of our planet, particularly the oceans, one country is taking action in a positive direction. 

(Please see video of the Coral Sea at the bottom of this post.)

Australia has moved to set up the world's biggest marine park to protect vast areas of the Coral Sea off the country's northeast coast and the site of fierce naval battles during World War Two.

Environment Minister Tony Burke said the park would cover almost 1 million square km -- an area the size of France and Germany combined -- and would help protect fish, pristine coral reefs and nesting sites for sea birds and the green turtle.

"The environmental significance of the Coral Sea lies in its diverse array of coral reefs, sandy cays, deep sea plains and canyons," Burke said. "It contains more than 20 outstanding examples of isolated tropical reefs, sandy cays and islands."

The new park would also cover ships sunk in the Battle of the Coral Sea, a series of naval engagements between Japanese, American and Australian forces in 1942, considered the world's first aircraft carrier battle.

Three U.S. ships were known to have sunk in the northeastern area of the Coral Sea, the USS Lexington, the USS Sims and the USS Neosho, Burke said.

The government will finalize what limits will be imposed on the Coral Sea marine park, which will be within Australia's economic zone, in 90 days.

The world's largest reserve currently was established by Britain last year around the Chagos Archipelago in the Indian Ocean, which includes coral atoll The Great Chagos Bank.

The Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill Reprise

Many thought and hoped the oil spill of April, 2010 was past us, was history. Alas, it is not.

My publisher, Lynda Burch of Guardian Angel Publishing, emailed me from Santa Rosa Island, Pensacola Beach, Florida, where she and her husband spend some time each winter.  With her permission, the following is what Lynda saw and photographed very recently:

 Santa Rosa Island, Pensacola Beach, Florida

                        February, 2011

"It is definitely not over, and BP says they are pulling out- 1/2 the claims have been denied and what about what is still going to happen?

I can't let my guests or my grandchildren in those floating contaminants. Skin is the most absorbent organ a human body has. I didn't see any warning signs, anyone testing the water, anyone interested in cleaning it up.

The little silvery fish (2-3 inches, part of the food chain) were washed up on the shore dead. The gulls and pelicans were out there in it. The dolphins were also out about another 1000 yards.

Lots of people on the beach didn't even know what the black and brown slimy stuff floating on edge of the surf was. I did email the local TV station but probably should have called them instead. It was very disturbing for such a beautiful day."

Because it's out of the news, there seems to be no immediacy about the spill anymore.  If this travesty is not addressed continuously and with utmost vigor and vigilance, it will still be an unmitigated disaster.  From my research on the gulf devastation, I think a quote from Sir Winston Churchill during World War II is in order:  "Now this is not the end.  It is not even the beginning of the end.  It is, perhaps, the end of the beginning."

It is Lynda's and my great hope that this kind of accident never occurs    again.  We adults, along with our children and grandchildren, need to     "take a stand on the sand" and see that it does not.  And if it does, God forbid, this time strong oversight should occur within the US government and any parties that caused it.