Book Recommendation: So Far from the Sea and One Candle
Two books from the MHC’s recently created New Books New Readers series “Carrying the Past” suggest themselves as appropriate for winter reading: So Far from the Sea and One Candle. Eve Bunting, the author of both stories, is outstanding in her ability to create thoughtful stories that address hard topics with warmth and hope. Both books address this issue in our theme of “Carrying the Past”: What do we choose from our past to preserve as a family or cultural memory? Both stories are told in first person by a child experiencing a tradition that the family wants remembered from their past.
In So Far From the Sea, illustrated by Chris Soentpiet, a family returns to a Japanese –American internment camp to place items of their choosing on the desolate grave of the grandfather who loved the sea, but who died there “so far from the sea.” Interspersed with the color pictures of the trip are black and white pictures of the camp as Dad has described it to his son. In response to his son’s comment that “It wasn’t fair. It was the meanest thing in the whole world,” Dad’s response is, “It wasn’t fair that Japan attacked this country either…There was a lot of anger then. A lot of fear….We have to put it behind us and move on.” However, it IS important that the memory of this time move with them into the future.
In One Candle, illustrator Wendy Poop uses soft watercolors to show the present experience of a child celebrating Hannukah with her family. Her aunt and grandmother’s memories of their time in a concentration camp are rendered in soft brown and white, with a focus on their care for each other rather than the stark cruelty of the camps. The present-day ritual celebrated by the family memorializes a single Hannukah candle made from a stolen potato and a bit of stolen margarine.
Both books are beautiful and well-told stories, and both are appropriate for introducing children over five to these aspects of our shared cultural past, especially if they inspire adult/child discussion. They are both available in paperback and might be a great present to your child’s school library!
(Recommended by Carolyn Sloan)
