Get Caught Reading! with our Virtual Garden Book Club

Photographer: Jessa Gardner

Did you know that May is National Get Caught Reading Month? To celebrate, we are recommending some of our favorite books by Japanese and Japanese-American authors. These recommendations come from Seattle Japanese Garden volunteers and staff.

Every Wednesday in May, we will share a book on our Facebook page, Instagram, and Twitter. Join us by reading along, sharing your favorite thing about the recommended book, or sharing your own book recommendations!

To start things off, we have two recommendations for you:

For kids: Little Kunoichi, The Ninja Girl, by Sanae Ishida

Little Kunoichi, The Ninja Girl (2015) by Seattle author Sanae Ishida follows a young ninja in training on a ‘super secret island’ in Japan who is preparing to perform at an island festival. While training, she learns the values of hard work, friendship, imagination,… and play! The fun story also introduces Japanese words and cultural concepts. Colorful paint-on-paper illustrations with seek-and-find elements add to the reading experience for 3 – 7 year olds.

For grown-ups: The Housekeeper and the Professor, by Yoko Ogawa

In Yoko Ogawa’s novel The Housekeeper and the Professor (2009; translation by Stephen Snyder), a housekeeper’s employer, a math professor, has a short-term memory of 80 minutes.  According to a Los Angeles Times review, the story of their relationship is “gorgeous, cinematic…. [with] all the charm and restraint of any by Ishiguro or Kenzaburo Oe, and the whimsy of Murakami”. One of the most prolific, awarded authors in Japan, Ogawa’s 2019 novel The Memory Police is on the 2020 International Booker Prize short list.

Special thanks to Cara Izumi, Corinne Kennedy, and the SJG volunteer reading groups for their suggestions! Since 2015, the Seattle Japanese Garden volunteer reading group has discussed books covering a wide range of genres and themes with the intention of deepening their understanding and appreciation of the garden.