ACHUKA Book of the Day 31 Jan 2022
2022 Batchelder Award Winner

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“This imaginative tale, enchantingly written and charmingly illustrated by veteran Japanese creators for young people, has a timeless feel. Its captivating blend of humor and mystery is undergirded with real substance that will provoke deeper contemplation. Udagawa’s translation naturally and seamlessly renders the text completely accessible to non-Japanese readers. An instant classic filled with supernatural intrigue and real-world friendship.” KIRKUS
“In recent years, children’s and young adult fiction have increasingly focused on bleak and dystopic futures, where characters often face nearly insurmountable hurdles and their hard-won victories often feel bittersweet. Temple Alley Summer is a refreshing break from all that, operating on the dreamy and poetic logic of magic realism. The lack of any pop culture references adds a semi-timeless quality to the tale, set in a world where adults can still learn from their mistakes, where kindness and compassion can work the strangest miracles, and where everyone gets a second chance if they believe in themselves.” Strange Horizons
“[The] story-within-a-story is really the key of Temple Alley Summer. It reads more like a Western fairytale than the story of a Japanese elementary schooler. The narrative voice is also completely different from Kazu’s, an impressive feat by Kashiwaba and translator Avery Fischer Udagawa.” Asian Review of Books

The Batchelder Award* is given to the most outstanding children’s book originating in a language other than English in a country other than the United States, and subsequently translated into English for publication in the United States. The novel was published in the UK last summer but it has taken this award to bring it to ACHUKA’s attention.

From the writer of The Mysterious Village Veiled in Mist, said to have influenced Hayao Miyazaki’s film Spirited Away, comes this fantastical and mysterious adventure filled with the living dead, a magical pearl, and a suspiciously nosy black cat named Kiriko.  The book is beautifully illustrated by Miho Satake.

Kazu knows something odd is going on when — while receiving himself out of an open window — he sees a girl in a white kimono sneak out of his house in the middle of the night. Was he dreaming? Did he see a ghost? Things get even stranger when he shows up to school the next day to see the very same figure sitting in his classroom. No one else thinks it’s weird, and, even though Kazu doesn’t remember ever seeing her before, they all seem convinced that the ghost-girl Akari has been their friend for years!

When Kazu’s summer project to learn about Kimyo Temple draws the meddling attention of his mysterious neighbor Ms. Minakami and his secretive new classmate Akari, Kazu soon learns that not everything is as it seems in his hometown. Kazu discovers that Kimyo Temple is linked to a long forgotten legend about bringing the dead to life, which could explain Akari’s sudden appearance―is she a zombie or a ghost? Kazu and Akari join forces to find and protect the source of the temple’s power. An unfinished story in a magazine from Akari’s youth might just hold the key to keeping Akari in the world of the living, and it’s up to them to find the story’s ending and solve the mystery as the adults around them conspire to stop them from finding the truth.

*Five Batchelder Honor Books also were selected: Coffee, Rabbit, Snowdrop, Lost ; In the Meadow of Fantasies; The Most Beautiful Story”; Sato the Rabbit; The Sea-Ringed World: Sacred Stories of the Americas.