"An ingenious simplicity and grace mark the first-person telling of the story of eleven-year-old Rinko and her Japanese family in Berkeley, California. Times are hard for everyone in 1935, but being Japanese is for Rinko an added burden. . . . Compared with the many worldly-wise contemporary book heroines, Rinko in her guilelessness is genuine and refreshing, and her worries and concerns seem wholly natural, honest and convincing".--The Horn Book.
Eleven-year-old Rinko grows up in a closely-knit Japanese American family in California during the Depression, a time of great prejudice.