Megan's Response to the second half of Weedflower and Baseball Saved Us

I really enjoyed Weedflower from beginning to end. After reading the first half I predicted that a relationship would form between Sumiko and Frank and I found these predictions to be. I loved reading about the interaction between the two and how they learned about friendship and looking past prejudice from one another. They found similarities in their situations and had compassion for one another. I was glad at the end that Frank gave Sumiko his address so they could keep in touch, which gives you the feeling that their friendship will last and that Sumiko is not losing a friend that she values so dearly. This book does a great job of showing the value of friendship and also provides models of friendship among "unlikely" people. Students may not think that they can make friends with adults or that they might know things that they can teach an adult like Sumiko did with Mr. Moto.

I enjoyed Baseball Saved Us because it taught me something I didn't know before. I didn't know that baseball played such a large role in the lives of the people in the camps. I also enjoyed the illustrations, they were done using a technique I had never heard of before. They were first scratched into beeswax which had been applied to paper and then oil paint was added after the image was scratched. It also said that some of the illustrations were inspired by photographs by Ansel Adams, a famous photographer, of Manzanar internment camp.