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Rating: 
Summary: Very Intriguing
Review: I am 10, but I found this book incredible. I love reading biographies and autobiographies so "The Invisible Thread" was perfect for me. Yoshiko writes well and I just couldn't believe that people would be so cruel to innocent people that looked like Japanese people. Yoshiko wasn't even really Japanese, just Nisei. This is one great book!!!!!
Rating:
Summary: Honest and insightful.
Review: I read this book, and found it VERY insightful. it describes her life in honesty, and with an uncensored style. But it was un-condemning. Which is good. I would reccomend it because it is written in a clean, and easy to follow style. It is well worth reading if one wishes to study up on the Japanese-American lifestyle.
Rating: 
Summary: Falls Flat in Execution
Review: I'm a freshman in high school, and recently I had to read this for my geography honors class... I'm sorry, but it just doesn't do it for me. The book is written for kids, as far as vocabulary goes, and I really doubt that anyone their age would find it that interesting. The first half of the book has nothing to do with the war or internment camps, despite the fact that this book is billed as a story about a shameful time in American history... Maybe it's referring to the Great Depression, because I didn't see one reference to Pearl Harbor until over half the book had passed. That's a bit sad, since all of the extraneous information that fills up the first half is nonsense about her childhood feelings. Nobody can really understand the way she thinks, since she's just a child at the time...
Once the book gets into the internment camp half of the book, it's pretty much just a collection of various experiences. The supposed effect is that you see how human Yoshiko is as a child, and then you see how she was devastated, but it doesn't work. Instead, the camps don't appear nearly as bad as they really were in this book, since the author seems to subconsciously focus on how the people of the camp were able to survive happily- or at least that's the overall impression I got after I'd finished the book.
One more comment: The author's style is good, especially for kids, but it's dumbed down by the word choice and sentence structure. Yoshiko's immature reactions to the world around her also help to destroy the story. It may be the truth, and the book certainly has a good message, but it fails in its execution.
Rating: 
Summary: Walking an invisible thread
Review: The delicate balance that must be maintained in non-fiction children's books is this: While we cannot pretend to ignore or beautify the ugly events that have happened in the past, at the same time we must make these horrendous occurrences palatable to the young reader. In the case of Yoshiko Uchida, the notable Japanese-American children's author has made her career in writing about Japanese, Japanese-Americans, and their place in history. With "The Invisible Thread" the author has decided to write a work that is a little more personal. This autobiography marks a departure for Uchida, leaving behind the fictional past for the real one. In it, kids learn first-hand about a particularly shameful (and shamingly recent) chapter in America's history: the degrading Japanese internment camps.
A good author writing about a catastrophic event leads up to the moment cautiously. If you're showing a difficult moment in a person's (or persons') life, you don't just run headlong into the moment without giving a little background first. In this way, Uchida sets the stage for the reader. Yoshiko grew up as a second generation Japanese-American in California in the 1930s. Born of parents that had both immigrated to the United States separately, Yoshiko was privileged to live in a fairly well-to-do area in Berkley, California. Living with Japanese ancestry in the U.S. at that time was not an easy thing, but Yoshika was hardly about to challenge the system. As we watch the author grows up, goes to college, and makes numerous friends. Her life, such as it was, was fairly uneventful. Then, just about halfway through the book Pearl Harbor is bombed and everything changes. Yoshiko and her family are sent packing from their beloved home (and dog) to temporary quarters in an old racing track. The story picks up as she learns to teach and exist in her new environment, detailing the dehumanizing effect that such living has on human beings.
What I liked about this book was the real sense one got of the difference the America of that time and the American of today. Uchida puts it best herself in a passage found in the chapter, "Prisoner of My Country". In this passage she writes:
"Resistance or confrontation such as we know them today was unthinkable, for the world then was a totally different place. There had been no freedom marches or demonstrations of protest. No one had yet heard of Martin Luture King, Jr. No one knew about ethnic pride. Most Americans were not concerned about civil rights and would not have supported us had we tried to resist the uprooting".Educators using this book today could easily point out that though we are not interning people of Middle Eastern descent today, we are certainly not making America a place that is much more hospitable today than it was for the Japanese at that time. The book is a useful tool for placing a moment in American history within its context. I was especially thrilled to find that there are additional resources and books listed in a neat bibliography for both kids and adults wanting to know more about Japanese internment camps. What is remarkable is that the book makes the event real to the reader, allowing us to feel a little of what the author, her family, and friends went through at the time. In the end, Uchida is an accomplished writer that knows exactly how to bring children into a dangerous past without horrifying them with too many of the details. It is a delicate line to walk and Uchida treads it with the utmost care.
Rating:
Summary: A very good book about a shameful time in history.
Review: Yoshiko Uchida vividly tells about growing up a Japanese American in California and being sent to a concentration camp during World War II. I found this book very interesting and couldn't put it down. It was interesting to read about the Japanese customs and holidays that her family observed and to learn more about something that should not have happened in our history.
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