Review by Booklist Review
A winter haiku opens this look at a grieving Japanese family. While spare text explains, "Feelings too big to hold inside must find a way out," numerous wordless images tell more of the story. Soft watercolor-and-colored-pencil illustrations in a symbolic blue evoke a permeating sadness, with touches of yellow--a bird, a flower, or paper cranes--serving as gentle reminders of the family's mother, wife, and daughter. When the family members separate to be alone, the son goes out for a walk, where he finds a flyer for a telephone booth with an old-fashioned rotary phone. In the phone booth, he talks to his mother, knowing that his words are being carried by the wind. He shares his experience with his sisters, grandfather, and father, all of whom eventually take a turn in the phone booth. As spring arrives with another haiku and the addition of green to the color palette, the family is united in the healing process. A concluding author's note describes her inspiration: a "wind phone" created in Japan after natural disasters in 2011.
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Based on the real-life creation of a "wind phone" through which mourning people might speak to departed loved ones, this thoughtful story by Ludwig (Brave Every Day) imagines a Japanese family grieving the death of the children's mother. In loose, blue-tinged washes, Otoshi (Lunch Every Day) paints the family around a low table, all painfully aware of the empty place: "Memories rush in. Feelings too big to hold inside must find a way out." A page turn reveals an old-fashioned telephone box. Here, a young child first places a call ("Are you there?" says the child into the receiver; "It's me"). One by one, family members are introduced to the phone and, via age-appropriate variations, find solace speaking to the person they loved. Their conversations, shown in vignettes ("Can you tell Dad to get us a puppy?"), reveal the therapeutic effect of continuing to speak to those who have died in this account of a family's mourning. Back matter contextualizes the wind phone, visited by thousands after Japan's 2011 earthquake and tsunami. Ages 4--8. (Oct.)
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Review by Kirkus Book Review
A telephone box and a little imagination help a family confront their grief. An Asian-presenting family sits around a low table with a conspicuously empty seat. The scene is depicted in a soft, muted, melancholy blue, while a memory of a meal with the now-departed loved one is shown in sunny yellow. That yellow hue then reappears in the form of a bird, which guides one of the family members to a telephone box where they have a (one-way) conversation with their loved one ("Can you hear me? I just hear the wind. Is that you?"). Other family members have conversations, too; after, each discovers a yellow flower and brings it back to the house, adding to a growing bouquet on the table. When one of the members learns about this, they break the vase, furious, scattering the flowers and the family. Only when the anguished member finds solace through the telephone can they also find peace with their family. Structured around the seasons, poetic text alternates between narration and dialogue. Sensitively composed illustrations, rendered in watercolor, pen, and colored pencil in a pastel palette, use colors thoughtfully. An author's note explains that this telephone box (kaze no denwa, or wind phone) is real and located in Ōtsuchi, Japan; it was created by Itaru Sasaki as a way to cope with the death of his cousin, and it has provided solace for others, including those affected by the 2011 earthquake and tsunami. (This book was reviewed digitally.) A beautifully written, quietly poignant depiction of one family's journey through loss. (photograph, resources on grief) (Picture book. 3-7) Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
