Cynthia Kadohata
Cynthia Kadohata (born July 2, 1956 in Chicago , Illinois) is a Japanese-born American writer who has received multiple awards for her children's books.
Life
Kadohata went to study in California, where she attended the University of Southern California her Bachelor of Arts majoring in journalism took off. She completed graduate studies at the University of Pittsburgh and Columbia University without obtaining any further degrees.
Her first published short story was published in 1986 in the New Yorker . This was followed by the novels The Floating World (Viking, 1989), In the Heart of the Valley of Love (Viking, 1992) and The Glass Mountains (Clarkston, GA, White Wolf Pub, 1995).
In 2005 she received the prestigious Newbery Medal and the Asian / Pacific American Award for Literature for the youth novel Kira-Kira (2004) . The story tells the inner conflict of a young person whose older sister, whom she admires, succumbs to a fatal cancer. The title of the book refers to the Japanese expression kira-kira , which was used between the two sisters to denote all subjective peculiarities that “sparkle” in their lives. The book was also on the list of nominations for the German Youth Literature Prize 2008 in the children's book category.
Her children's novel Weedflower (2006), which received a PEN USA Literary Award for Children's and Young Adult Literature in 2007 , is based on the imprisonment of her Japanese parents in the Poston internment camp during World War II . From the perspective of a 12-year-old girl, this inner-American aftermath of the war is described and made accessible to subsequent generations of schoolchildren. A total of around twenty juries from the United States also honored the book.
Her next book, Cracker! The Best Dog in Vietnam (Atheneum Books for Young Readers, 2007) was devoted to a topic of contemporary history, namely the Vietnam War. It depicts the war experience from the unusual perspective of a dog and has won children's book awards in six US states (California, Ohio, Nebraska, Kansas, and North and South Carolina).
The children's novel Outside Beauty (2008) describes the experience of a 13-year-old and her three sisters, all of whom have different fathers. After the mother's accident, they are separated from each other.
In 2013 she received the US National Book Award in the Young People's Literature category for the youth novel The Thing About Luck (Atheneum, 2013) .
Kadohata lives and works in Los Angeles .
Works
- The Floating World (Viking, 1989);
- In the Heart of the Valley of Love (Viking, 1992);
- The Glass Mountains (Clarkston, GA, White Wolf Pub, 1995), with illustrations by Terese Nielson and Larry S. Friedman;
- Kira-Kira (Atheneum, 2004);
- Kira-Kira . Gerstenberg Verlag , Hildesheim 2007. 240 pp. ISBN 978-383695140-1
- Weedflower (Atheneum, 2006);
- Cracker! The Best Dog in Vietnam (Atheneum, 2007);
- Outside Beauty (Atheneum, 2008);
- A Million Shades of Gray (Atheneum, 2010);
- The Thing About Luck (Atheneum, 2013), illustrated by Julia Kuo;
- Electricity (Atheneum, 2014);
- Half a World Away (Atheneum, 2014);
Awards
- 2005: Newbery Medal for Kira-Kira
- 2005: Asian / Pacific American Award for Literature for Kira-Kira
- 2006: PEN USA Literary Award for Children's Literature for Weedflower
- 2011: California Young Reader Medal for Cracker! The Best Dog in Vietnam
- 2013: US National Book Award for Young People's Literature for The thing about luck
Web links
supporting documents
- ^ Author profile in the Internet Speculative Fiction Database (ISFDB) .
- ^ Newbery Medal 2005 , Association for Library Service to Children (ALSC)
- ↑ Awards by Year 2007 ( Memento of the original from October 13, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ↑ California Young Reader Medal Winners 2011 Middle School / Junior High (Grades 6-8)
- ↑ Sunday Book Review 'Half a World Away' , New York Times October 17, 2014, accessed May 14, 2015
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Kadohata, Cynthia |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | American writer (children's and youth literature) |
| DATE OF BIRTH | 2nd July 1956 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Chicago , Illinois |