Manami’s best friend Kimmi seems almost untouched, but even her undiminished cheerfulness represents her particular reaction. Grandfather withdraws, sits around, and resists eating. One of the most important things Sepahban does is to make sure that not only Manami, but each character in the story has a distinct response to being put in the camp. She also, however, uses several specific techniques to ensure that Manami’s inability to speak is believable. Sepahban weaves in Manami’s lost voice gently, without making it feel out of balance with other story threads.

And, in the midst of this, without any physical injury or illness, Manami literally loses her voice.

They live in horrible conditions, are treated like the enemy, and face challenge after challenge. In Lois Sephaban’s Paper Wishes, Manami and her family are forced to leave their home in the Pacific Northwest during World War II and move to an internment camp in the hot, dry desert. We can write pretty much anything you want, right? We’re making up the story, we’re creating the world, and what we put into that world is up to us. It isn't until she finds a way to let go of her guilt that Manami can reclaim the piece of herself that she left behind and accept all that has happened to her family.It’s fiction. She and her grandfather are devastated, but Manami clings to the hope that somehow Yujiin will find his way to the camp and make her family whole again.

Manami decides to sneak Yujiin under her coat and gets as far as the mainland before she is caught and forced to abandon Yujiin. Manami is sad to go, but even worse is that they are going to have to give her and her grandfather's dog, Yujiin, to a neighbor to take care of. It's 1942, after the attack on Pearl Harbor, and Manami and her family are Japanese American, which means that the government says they must leave their home by the sea and join other Japanese Americans at a prison camp in the desert. Ten-year-old Manami did not realize how peaceful her family's life on Bainbridge Island was until the day it all changed. A moving debut middle-grade novel about a girl whose family is relocated to a Japanese internment camp during World War II-and the dog she has to leave behind.

Paper wishes book