The new January read...

Sorry guys, I totally blew it...I dont know how I forgot that East of Eden was already chosen (Sorry Stef!)

So, Here is the new January pick:

The description from Amazon.com:

"Salisbury (Blue Skin of the Sea) again invokes a Hawaiian setting for this novel, which chronicles the trials of a Japanese American boy and his immigrant family in 1941. Tomi's fisherman father and housekeeper mother work hard to support Tomi, his younger sister and grandfather in their cramped servants' house. While he embraces everything about being American, including a passion for baseball, Tomi struggles to find some middle ground between his modern life and the nationalism and traditional values his parents and Grandpa try to impart. But as WWII intensifies and Pearl Harbor is bombed, Tomi's family faces racism, violence and hardship at every turn. Tomi's father and grandfather are taken away and incarcerated, leaving Tomi to worry if he can perform honorably as man of the house. Salisbury skillfully describes Tomi's emotional highs and lows, and has a particular knack for realistically portraying the camaraderie and dialogue between boyhood chums. The slow-evolving plot drags in a few spots (especially the play-by-play descriptions of baseball games), but readers are rewarded with steadily building dramatic tension in the novel's second half and a satisfyingly open-ended finale. Ages 10-up."

Did you catch the Ages 10-up part :) I read this book in 5th grade and it has stuck with me ever since. It's a really fast read, but very emotional and thought provoking for a child of that age. It was one of those that really stuck with me and helped me to appreciate what my grandparents and great-grandparents went through during the war when it came to Hawaii. It'll probably only take you a day to read it, but I'm sure it will stick with you. Enjoy!

p.s. I checked the queue on the Hawaii Library system and it looks like there are lots of copies available, so it shouldn't be a problem to pick one up.