Shizuko's Daughter by Kyoko Muri

Shizuko's Daughter by Kyoko Muri

Yuki Okuda, a smart, creative, and bold, twelve-year-old girl from Japan finds herself lost and confused after her mother commits suicide. Having been left to live with her father, a distant and numb man, and her new insensitive stepmother, Yuki struggles to cope with her tragic loss and searches for the meaning of life and death. After seven years of pain, loneliness, nostalgia, and growth, Yuki emerges from the depths of tragedy as a new young woman with a new perspective on life. In a rollercoaster of emotion, Mori’s novel takes the reader through moments of laughter, pain, joy, and sorrow to convey the ultimate message, hope.

This novel deserves to be taught in a middle school classroom. Mori combines a fairly simple read with some very mature ideas and issues. This book deals with some of the struggles that middle-schoolers face on a daily basis like independence, coping with loss, self-exploration, love, family issues, growing up, and certainly appeals to a wide variety of readers. Obviously, some of the content deals with extremely sensitive material, so it would have to be handled properly and taught to a mature group of kids, but overall, I would highly recommend this book for teachers and students everywhere.