Inzana, Ryan. Ichiro.

Inzana, Ryan.     Ichiro.     Houghton Mifflin  unp   $19.99      978-0-547-25269-8 unp         E-BN  Graphic novel    

Ichiro, a child born of a Japanese mother in America, has traveled back to Japan to visit his grandfather.  His discovery of who he is will take him on an incredible mythical journey into the realm of fantasy.  Ichiro’s mother is Japanese but his father is American, and unfortunately he never got the chance to know his father because the latter died in the war when he was a child.  Now his mother has taken him for a visit to Japan, but for a child raised in America this new land feels very foreign.  Ichiro feels displaced and has a hard time fitting into the ways of Japan.  Then one night he has a dream, but the dream becomes a nightmare in which he is taken from his room by a monster and pulled into a very dark hole.  When he emerges from the dark, he discovers that he is no longer in the real world but in the domain of the gods, where he will have to fight his nightmares.

This is a graphic novel in color and black-and-white, where monsters roam the streets and a child is lost, looking for a way out of his nightmare.  It is beautifully done in a large format, and should be popular with the boys.     -- Magna Diaz        

Fantasy, Japanese-Americans - Fiction