Weedflower

Most Recently Read Book:

Weedflower

By Cynthia Kadohata

I love pieces of historical fiction. This genre is closely tied with fantasy/sci-fi/dystopia as one of my favorite genres. For book club we read Moloka'i by Alan Brennert which is about people with leprosy who were quarantined on an island in Hawai'i. It coincided with the Japanese internment after Pearl Harbor was bombed. This book is all about a girl and her family who is relocated to an internment camp and focuses on her story. It is a really beautiful story about family, loneliness, isolation, developing relationships, and following your dreams. It was a simple story and nicely written. I really enjoyed the story. I love books that give a snapshot of someone's life during a period in history that is often overlooked, forgotten, or just not in the spotlight.

Historical fiction makes me realize how important it is for students to know about what people went through in the past. I understand the importance of history, obviously, but these stories really make me realize how important it is to read them in order to be able to connect with people from the past. I think history becomes so much more remarkable when you are able to make a more personal connection with the people living in a different time period. It could be through historical fiction or biographies/autobiographies that read like fiction. When we connect with people it seems to be so much easier to have a true appreciation for what people have gone through before us to have gotten us to where we are in the world...good or bad. I realize more and more how essential this genre is to influencing human connections in our world today.