Kira-Kira by Cynthia Kadohata is about a young girl named Katie and her sister Lynn. Katie and Lynn are really close and do everything together, but their relationship is still put to the test throughout the book. Katie and her family are forced to move to Georgia so that their parents can find work in the poultry industry. While Lynn is really motivated to do well in school, Katie is just the opposite as she does not understand the point of school. Lynn eventually begins to battle with anemia and lymphoma. The parents of the novel struggle to buy a house of their own, and thus work in poor conditions, in factories that are trying to start a union. The entire family faces issues of race and segregation as one of the few Japanese families in southern Georgia.
In terms of the teachability of the novel, I would suggest this book as an addition to your classroom library. The book deals with many issues of race and poverty, but the book remains appropriate for middle school children. The reading level is fairly easy and engaging for students. It would be difficult to do much vocabulary with the book, but it brings up a lot of great topics for discussion. This book is also steered more towards girls than boys, but there are strong male roles throughout the book that students could connect to. I would suggest teaching this book at the 6th-7th grade level. Whether or not you would want to focus the entire classroom on this novel is questionable, but it is a book worth having for your classroom.
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