While I Was Away (Hardcover) (ISBN-13: 9780063017115)

Named one of New York Public Library's & Bank Street's Best Books of the Year!

The Farewell meets Erin Entrada Kelly's Blackbird Fly in this empowering middle grade memoir from debut author Waka T. Brown, who takes readers on a journey to 1980s Japan, where she was sent as a child to reconnect to her family's roots.

When twelve-year-old Waka's parents suspect she can't understand the basic Japanese they speak to her, they make a drastic decision to send her to Tokyo to live for several months with her strict grandmother. Forced to say goodbye to her friends and what would have been her summer vacation, Waka is plucked from her straight-A-student life in rural Kansas and flown across the globe, where she faces the culture shock of a lifetime.

In Japan, Waka struggles with reading and writing in kanji, doesn't quite mesh with her complicated and distant Obaasama, and gets made fun of by the students in her Japanese public-school classes. Even though this is the country her parents came from, Waka has never felt more like an outsider.

If she's always been the "smart Japanese girl" in America but is now the "dumb foreigner" in Japan, where is home...and who will Waka be when she finds it?

Author: Waka T. Brown
ISBN-10: 0063017113
ISBN-13: 9780063017115
Publisher: Quill Tree Books
Language: English
Published: 01/26/2021
Pages: 320
Format: Hardcover
Weight: 0.85lbs
Size: 8.20h x 5.80w x 1.20d

Accelerated Reader:
Reading Level: 5.1
Point Value: 10
Interest Level: Middle Grade
Quiz #/Name: 511952 / While I Was Away


Review Citation(s):
Bulletin of Ctr for Child Bks 12/01/2020
Kirkus Reviews 11/15/2020
Publishers Weekly 12/07/2020
Booklist 01/01/2021 pg. 77
School Library Journal 02/01/2021 pg. 90