Kira Kira by Cynthia Kadohata

Kira-Kira is one of those books that even though you may already know the ending you keep reading because it has really good voice.  Katie tells the story of her family. A Japanese American family in the 1960s living in Georgia.  She tells of her sister, Lynn, an older sister who shows Katie that everything "glitters", which is the meaning of kira kira. As you read Katie's story you see how Lynn becomes deathly ill and Katie has to take care of her and her brother. You see the hardships and struggles. You see the Japanese culture from her parents and the innocence of a young girl.  But, you also see that young girl mature and begin to see for herself kira kira in everything.  And as she sees the glitter, how she reminds the rest of her family that even though there are sad times, there is something to hope, something that glitters, something kira kira.

I love when I read a book and it causes me to want to research more about a topic. In this case, I wasn't wanting to research child illnesses, but chicken hatcheries in the 1960s. This was intriguing to me for some odd reason. I don't raise chickens (my grandparents did that and I seriously that smell still knocks me out just thinking about it), I have no desire to ever raise chickens (beside the smell factor, my husband would think I was off my rocker since we live in an apartment), but the details given about the hatcheries and the unions at that time made me want to research more.  So, off I go to google-land...