A Diamond in the Desert by Kathryn Fitzmaurice - OPTIONAL

Fitzmaurice, Kathryn A Diamond in the Desert, 256 p. Viking (Penguin), FEBRUARY 2012.  Tetsu and his family have sent to an internment camp in the middle of the Arizona desert because they are Japanese.  And during WWII, that is not good.  Tetsu, his mother and his little sister wait anxiously for word of their father, who was taken somewhere else by the American government.  And waiting is about all there is to do in the middle of nowhere, with little money and no access to services – except baseball.  Tetsu and his friends find solace in practice and play and learn to confront the new hand life has dealt them.  I think Yoshiko Uchida’s books are still the definitive elementary level historical fiction about the internment camps and Thin Wood Walls by David Patneude is my favorite middle or high school version.  This one lacks the heart of the others – the short, choppy chapters break up the narrative in odd little chunks instead of allowing the reader to immerse themselves into the story.  EL, MS – OPTIONAL. Cindy, Library Teacher