Reviews for Sadako and the Thousand Paper Cranes, Vol. 1

The average rating for Sadako and the Thousand Paper Cranes, Vol. 1 based on 2 reviews is 3 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2008-05-28 00:00:00 Scott Chubb They had us make our own cranes when we read this during middle school. I was new to origami, but it only took a couple of minutes to make the crane. I suddenly wondered how long it would take to make a thousand. At two minutes a crane, sitting in bed and doing it for, say, eight out of my sixteen waking hours, I'd be done in less than a week. This seemed funny to me, until I read that the real Sadako did finish her thousand cranes in less then a month, and kept on folding more. But since the book posits that her wish was to stay alive, perhaps the author thought that to have her reach her goal and still die would be too sad. Or perhaps the author recognized that, without the dream of that wish, there would be no real story to tell. I find this disappointing, as the author could have said something more meaningful if Sadako had finished them, but still died: that no one can stand against their own death, but even as we face our own, we may fight for something greater, we may try to fight against a world of senseless death. Are we afraid to tell our children it is a fight we can never win? Does that make it less worth fighting? Wouldn't it be better for them to learn that now, from someone they trust, rather than to discover it later, when they are already in the middle of the confusions of life? What could be more disheartening than suddenly having that dream snatched away? It is a difficult question: how to breach, for our children, the concepts of death, of war, of hope, and of the inescapable. When we scale it down, to one person, to one pain, that is when we feel it the most. But when we do this, we miss out on all that surrounds it. By concentrating on one person, you can turn a mutual war into a directed crime, and there lies the danger. It is not uplifting to see a little girl die slowly, of something she cannot understand, to have her promise of a life revoked, but this is not all there is to the matter. As human beings, it is easy for us to look at the suffering of a few, especially a spectacular suffering: nuclear weapons, the Holocaust, 9/11, and feel enraged. And it should upset us. War is unequal, unfair, and makes a mockery of beauty, art, and humanity. But it is always too easy for us to forget the other side. So many people react to this book with sorrow for the little girl, with a sense that the nuclear weapons were a tragedy, unnecessary, and inhumane. But that is simply ignoring the larger story. Where are the books about all the children the Japanese soldiers killed? Even without nuclear weapons, the Japanese practiced total war, which meant hundreds of thousands of civilians dying every month. They slaughtered children, they took slaves and worked them to death in mines. They used biological weapons on Chinese citizens and killed others in nightmarish testing facilities where Japanese scientists observed the effects of poisons, chemicals, and disease on their hapless test subjects. They started the war because they were nationalists and wanted to expand, to destroy their neighbors, and to conquer the world. They refused to accept that losing was an option, and were willing to die to win. If the Allies attacked Japan itself, the Japanese planned to recruit every man, woman, and child during the final invasion, to blow up American tanks with bombs strapped to fifteen year-old boys. Even after the first atomic bomb was dropped, the Japanese command'including the Emporor'rallied to continue the war, even passing off the bombing itself as an industrial accident. It is important to recognize the suffering of others, but it seems we too often concentrate on the suffering of one person over another. It is easier for us to concentrate this way, to see something spectacular and terrifying like the 2,752 deaths of 9/11, and ignore the 1,311,969 Iraqis dead since. Or look at the death of Jews in the Holocaust and ignore the Poles, Romany, Atheists, and Homosexuals who died alongside them I sometimes fear that by hiding from children how commonplace death really is, we do not allow them to think about death except for isolated, melodramatic stories. If we cannot learn confront death except when it spectacular, then we will never really try to stop it, because we will only focus on the rare cases, and fail to notice that death is no less final from untreated disease as from a gun. Perhaps I am silly to expect more of children's books than I do of adult books, but then, I've found I can expect more from children than from adults. I am of the opinion that the best way to prevent children and adolescents from having early pregnancies is by giving them all the difficult, unpleasant details. I think the same goes for war. This doesn't mean showing them footage of either act, but an open, honest sit-down beats dramatized, nationalistic propaganda any day of the week.

Review # 2 was written on 2016-12-25 00:00:00 John Cutajar Sadako and the Thousand Paper Cranes, Eleanor Coerr Sadako and the Thousand Paper Cranes is a children's historical novel written by Canadian-American author Eleanor Coerr and published in 1977. It is set in Japan after World War II. The short novel is a fictional retelling of the story of Sadako Sasaki, who lived in Hiroshima at the time of the atomic bombing by the United States. Sadako was 2 years old when the atomic bomb (Little Boy) was dropped on August 6, 1945, near her home by Misasa Bridge in Hiroshima, Japan. She was at home when the explosion occurred, about one mile from ground zero. In November 1954, when she was 12 she developed swellings on her neck and behind her ears. In January 1955, purple spots had formed on her legs. Subsequently, she was diagnosed with leukemia (her mother referred to it as "an atom bomb disease"). She was hospitalized on February 21, 1955, and given a year to live. After being diagnosed with leukemia from the radiation, Sadako's friend told her to fold origami paper cranes (orizuru) in hope of making a thousand of them. She was inspired to do so by the Japanese legend that one who created a thousand origami cranes would be granted a wish. Her wish was simply to live. In this retelling of her story, she managed to fold only 644 cranes before she became too weak to fold any more, and died on the morning of October 25, 1955. Her friends and family helped finish her dream by folding the rest of the cranes, which were buried with Sadako. However, the claim in the book that Sadako "died before completing the 1000 cranes, and her two friends completed the task, placing the finished cranes in her casket" is not backed up by her surviving family members. According to her family, and especially her older brother Masahiro Sasaki who speaks on his sister's life at events, Sadako not only exceeded 644 cranes, she exceeded her goal of 1000 and died having folded approximately 1400 paper cranes. Masahiro Sadako, says in his book The Complete Story of Sadako Sasaki that she exceeded her goal. Mr. Sasaki and the family have donated some of Sadako's cranes at places of importance around the world: in NYC at the 9-11 memorial, at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, at The Truman Library & Museum on November 19, 2015, at Museum Of Tolerance on May 26, 2016, and the Japanese-American National Museum three days later. USS Arizona Crane Donation and President Truman Museum Donation helped by Mr. Clifton Truman Daniel who is the grandson of President Truman. After her death, Sadako's friends and schoolmates published a collection of letters in order to raise funds to build a memorial to her and all of the children who had died from the effects of the atomic bomb. In 1958, a statue of Sadako holding a golden crane was unveiled in the Hiroshima Peace Memorial, also called the Genbaku Dome, and installed in the Hiroshima Peace Park. At the foot of the statue is a plaque that reads: "This is our cry. This is our prayer. Peace on Earth." Every year on Obon Day, which is a holiday in Japan to remember the departed spirits of one's ancestors, thousands of people leave paper cranes near the statue. A paper crane database has been established online for contributors to leave a message of peace and to keep a record of those who have donated cranes. تاریخ نخستین خوانش: روز بیست و پنجم ماه دسامبر سال 1984 میلادی عنوان: ساداکو و هزار درنای کاغذی؛ نویسنده: الینور کوئر؛ مترجم: مریم پیشگاه؛ تهران، کانون پرورش فکری کودکان و نوجوانان، تهران، 1359، در 58ص؛ چاپ دیگر 1362؛ چاپ هشتم 1374؛ چاپ نهم 1377؛ چاپ دهم 1381؛ شابک 9644321626؛ موضوع داستانهای واقعی ژاپنی - سده 20م داستانی واقعی از دختری به نام «ساداکو ساساکی» ست؛ که هنگام بمباران اتمی هیروشیما، در آن شهر می‌زیسته‌ است؛ «ساداکو» به دلیل تشعشعات، سرطان خون گرفت، و در دوران حیاتش در یک آسایشگاه، بنا بر یک باور، برای بهبود خود، اریگامی درناهای کاغذی را به تعداد هزار عدد درست می‌کرد؛ این کتاب به زبانهای بسیار ترجمه شده، و جزو برنامه‌ های صلح، برای دانش آموزان است؛ ا. شربیانی