Tag Maggie Tokuda-Hall

Love in the Library

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Love in the Library
Maggie Tokuda-Hall and Yas Imamura
Walker Books


It’s possible to find love, even under the worst situations and so it was for Tama and George in this story based on the experiences of the author’s grandparents who were put in Minidoka incarceration camp during the second world war just for being Japanese Americans. (An author’s note explains the reasons for this terrible unjust treatment at the end of the book.)

This particular love blooms in a desert library in Minidoka incarceration camp where young Tama works. Every day George visits the library; he too is a lover of books, or so it seems as he always takes away a pile of them and always has a smile on his face. ‘Constant’ Tama calls George and his smile

as helped by books, she tries not to spend all her time thinking of the life before incarceration. Instead she thinks of the gift of the books she is surrounded by.

Gradually, struggling to describe her overwhelming feelings, she opens up to George. He offers her a word – human – and it helps her feel less alone; he also uses the same word to explain why he vistis the library daily and takes so many books. Hope and love blossom – a miracle for sure. Tama and George marry and their first child is born in Minidoka – another light in their lives.

Maggie Tokuda-Hall’s telling is beautifully crafted and together with exquisitely illustrated scenes by Yas Imamura in muted tones showing the harsh realities of the camp, highlight the injustice while at the same time celebrate the treasure of hope and love humans can find against all the odds.

A book that deserves to be widely read.

Also an Octopus

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Also an Octopus
Maggie Tokuda-Hall and Benji Davies
Walker Books
This collaboration between debut author, Maggie Tokuda-Hall and award-winning illustrator, Benji Davies (The Storm Whale, The Storm Whale in Winter and Grandad’s Island) is essentially a witty metanarrative about how to write a story. It’s littered with wonderfully whimsical characters – obviously characters are one of the must haves for a successful storyteller: herein we have a main character in the form of a ukulele-playing octopus.
But lets go right back to the author’s opening line, ‘every story starts the same way … with nothing.‘ Now anybody who writes or indeed works on the writing process with children, knows the truth of that. Back to our octopus.; ‘… in order for it to be a story and not just an octopus, that octopus needs to want something.’ What about a ‘totally awesome shining purple spaceship capable of intergalactic travel’? Now that does sound exciting. But of course such things cannot be easily got hold of, they have to be earned; or, put another way, built from drinks cans, string, glitter, glue, umbrellas and err, waffles.

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No easy task: enter another character in the form of a truly adorable bunny – certainly no rocket scientist, so maybe that rocket isn’t about to become airborne any time soon. Did I hear the word “DESPONDENT” – surely not.

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Time for a spot of music perhaps …
It might prove just the thing to start a resolution (note that ‘r’ word, would-be story writers) forming in the mind …

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Tokuda-Hall’s deadpan humour, wherein she demonstrates the ups and downs of the writing process with the interplay between her cast of characters and the narrator), is superbly orchestrated by Davies’ fantastic images that appear to simply pop onto the pages as if at the author’s behest. Illustrators know that simply isn’t true, which makes Benji Davies’ seemingly effortless digital visuals all the more brilliant. And I love the circularity of the whole thing.
A must have for anyone working on developing the process of writing with children. It will surely get their imaginative juices flowing.

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