Kategoria BISAC: Juvenile Fiction >> Historical - Asia

This true children's story is told by a little bonsai tree, called Miyajima, that lived with the same family in the Japanese city of Hiroshima for more than 300 years before being donated to the National Arboretum in Washington DC in 1976 as a gesture of friendship between America and Japan to celebrate the American Bicentennial.

From the Book:
"In 1625, when Japan was a land of samurai and castles, I was a tiny pine seedling. A...

Tamie Hoshiko is just six years old when her father, Shizuwo, dies in Kumamoto City, Japan, in 1938. As her father takes his last breath, he instructs Tamie, the oldest child, to always take care of her twenty-four-year-old mother, Tome who is left to raise four children.

Tragedy strikes again in December of 1941 when Tamie is nine years old. War has once again come to Japan. She and her family experience severe food shortages, air raids, bombings, and even being shot at from fighter airplanes. She loses neighbors and friends to this war. It is a very hard life for such a young girl to...

In 1942, when Mahatma Gandhi asks Indians to give one family member to the freedom movement, ten-year-old Anjali is devastated to think of her father risking his life for the freedom struggle.

But it turns out he isn't the one joining. Anjali's mother is. And with this change comes many more adjustments designed to improve their country and use "ahimsa"--non-violent resistance--to stand up to the British government. First the family must trade in their fine foreign-made clothes for homespun cotton, so Anjali has to give up her prettiest belongings. Then her mother decides to reach...

The Shimmering Secret sparkles with delightful narrative and vibrant, full-color illustrations. Set in an ancient Chinese village, the tale provides a cross-cultural message of hope and transformation. The adventures of little Hu Mei (rhymes with You May) and Wang Fu - the village bully - lead youngsters of any age to the secret that lies within each and every one of us. The ageless and timeless struggle to understand human feelings and behavior is answered when the children discover that there is a core of goodness beyond measure inside of them. In a time of much...