Love Letter to the Midwest

The Thing about Luck by Cynthia Kadohata, illus. by Julia Kuo, begins as the story of an intergenerational family and transforms into a love letter to the Midwest.

Cynthia Kadohata

Each year, Summer Miyamoto's family hits the road to harvest wheat in the fields of Kansas, Texas and Oklahoma. Usually her parents go with Summer, her brother, Jaz, her Obaachan (grandmother) and Jiichan (grandfather). This time, her parents are in Japan attending to elderly ailing relatives. So Summer's grandparents are in charge. Jiichan operates a combine, which reaps, threshes and winnows the wheat, and Obaachan and Summer prepare the meals for the combine operators. 

Their days are long, but the setting is breathtaking. Here Summer describes the uncut wheat on a gentle slope of the Franklins' Oklahoma farm: "It looked like windblown sand beneath the bright sky." As someone who grew up in Michigan, this reader appreciated the Midwest anew, seeing the landscape through Summer's eyes. Her first-person narrative perfectly captures the rhythms of their days, as determined by daylight, weather and mealtimes.

Summer roots readers in the moment: we see the operators navigate the rolling hills with the unwieldy combines, anticipating every uneven patch, and the precision with which the drivers must align to the grain trailer to empty their load. There is an art to the process unique to its mission, and every step must be executed with absolute precision. Summer's awe inspires our own: "I don't know. I mean, maybe computers and cell phones and rocket ships are more magical, but to me, nothing beats the combine.... In a short time, the combine takes something humans can't use and then turns it into something that can feed us." Julia Kuo's drawings (meant to represent Summer's notebook pages) show each stage of the process with a handful of clear line drawings.

When Summer must, in a moment of crisis (Jiichan falls suddenly ill on the job), drive the combine herself, readers learn just how mammoth these machines are. Throughout, a story unfolds of the toll the work takes on Jiichan, as well as a lighter subplot about Summer's crush on her employers' son. These, too, highlight the cycles of life, as Obaachan and Jiichan share wisdom gained through experience with their granddaughter, whose life is just beginning. And always the land stretches before them, and the descent of night or rain threatens their mission to yield the most wheat that they can from these fields of windblown sand beneath the bright sky. 

Extended Family

The relationship between the third-grade heroine and her grandfather forms the core of Clara Lee and the Apple Pie Dream by Jenny Han, illustrated by Julia Kuo. It’s relatively rare to find new books with portrayals of an intergenerational family living together under the same roof.

Tomie dePaola’s Nana Upstairs and Nana Downstairs and his 26 Fairmount Avenue books spring to mind. And for older readers, there’s Paul Fleischman’s The Borning Room, and two books by Sharon Creech—Heartbeat and Granny Torelli Makes Soup. And one of my favorite tributes to intergenerational families and relationships is a nonfiction title—Eloise Greenfield's book written with her mother, Lessie Jones Little, Childtimes: A Three-Generation Memoir, illustrated by Jerry Pinkney, which covers life from the late 19th-century through the mid-20th-century. This was (and is) a common experience for many families, especially when they were first arriving in the United States.

Clara Lee confides everything in Grandpa, including her wish to be Little Miss Apple Pie in their town’s Apple Blossom Festival. Grandpa’s unfamiliarity with some of the rituals of the Apple Blossom Festival gives Clara Lee reason to explain them (for his as well as readers’ benefit). And when her anxiety about preparing for the contest causes her to grow impatient with her six-year-old sister, Emmeline, Grandpa may be gentler with the third-grader than perhaps her parents would be, but his disappointment in her behavior makes a greater impact on Clara Lee.

In the book’s most poignant scene, Clara Lee tells her grandfather about Miss Little Apple Pie hopeful Dionne Gregory bragging to Clara Lee that her great-great-great-uncle was one of their town’s founding fathers, and that her family is “as American as apple pie.” His response—that her Korean American heritage makes her more of a person, not less of a person—provides the perfect reassurance for Clara Lee. He gives Clara Lee a way of perceiving herself that will far outlast a Little Miss Apple Pie crown.