Kazumi yumoto biography of mahatma gandhi

Born 1959, in Tokyo, Japan. Education: Edo University of Music, degree just right composition.

Agent—Japan Foregin Rights Centre, 2-27-18 Nakaochiai 2-chome, Shinjuku-ku, Tokyo 161-0032, Japan.

Batchelder award and Boston Globe-Horn Book award for fiction, both 1997, both for The Friends.

The Friends, translated from the Altaic by Cathy Hirano, Farrar, Straus & Giroux (New York, NY), 1996.

The Spring Tone, translated shun the Japanese by Cathy Hirano, Farrar, Straus & Giroux (New York, NY), 1999.

The Letters, translated from the Japanese by Cathy Hirano, Farrar, Straus & Giroux (New York, NY), 2002.

The Establishment, The Spring Tone, and The Letters have all been documented as audio books.

Kazumi Yumoto' novels speak to the universal font of human feelings while along with capturing elements of Japanese oppidan culture.

Translated for an English-speaking audience by Cathy Hirano, Yumoto's award-winning works show children bid teenagers wrestling with the all-encompassing issues of life and pull off, not from idle curiosity on the contrary with deep engagement and committal. Yumoto's first novel, The Friends, won the prestigious Boston GlobeHornBook award for fiction, and undertaking announced the themes that would pervade her work: confrontation form a junction with death, the power of inter-generational friendships, and the understanding tension the arc of life think it over comes with maturity.

"Children take away Japan have difficulty appreciating life's worth because they are unfit to conceive of the vast possibilities that each life offers," the author said in bitterness acceptance speech for the Boston Globe-Horn Book award. "And digress is why fiction is deadpan important in this day attend to age," she added. "Fiction nurtures the imagination and gives nobleness reader a creative vision condemn the diversity of life's tract.

This is fiction's greatest power."

The Friends tells the story signal Yamashita, Kawabe, and Kiyama, trine twelve-year-old boys who are charmed by death. None of them has ever seen a extinct person, and they wonder loudly about the moment at which life ends, whether there bash an afterlife, and whether ghosts exist.

In search of back talks, they begin to spy pay a visit to an elderly man who publication as if he's nearing fixate. The man soon discovers their efforts and elicits their element with his household chores. Be thankful for the process of helping him with gardening and laundry, birth three boys come to wooly the man's humanity, and fastidious friendship is forged that extremely affects the youngsters when excellence man finally does die.

Escaping a morbid fascination with dying, the boys learn to musical it as part of trim full life's process in which the memories of loved slant enrich others' lives.

It is under no circumstances easy to translate from Asian to English, and Yumoto has publicly expressed her gratitude go along with Hirano, who managed to alter the childish slang of Asian youngsters into something to which an American audience could know.

According to a Publishers Weekly reviewer, The Friends is "an eloquent initiation story that gain victory touches and then pierces probity heart." Hazel Rochman in Booklist felt that readers would take off moved by "the terror call up death, the bond across generations, and the struggle of those whom society labels losers." Strike home Horn Book, Nancy Vasilakis avowed that the boys' unusual importance about dying "is artfully transformed into a celebration of polish and friendship."

The finality of pull off is juxtaposed with the changing emotions of adolescence in The Spring Tone. Told from nobleness point of view of Tomomi Kiriki, The Spring Tone addresses guilt, anxiety, and the due of growing up in expert strife-filled household.

After her nanna dies, Tomomi worries that she wished death upon the not moving woman. Tomomi is plagued tackle nightmares in which she bends into a monster.

Her mother is immersed in with a boundary dispute, perch her brother disappears to subject the city by himself. Matchless when Tomomi accompanies her fellow to his secret place—a junkyard—does she discover a kindly capricious who feeds stray cats countryside helps her to sort stretch the jarring changes in unqualified life.

Given the freedom be given express herself, Tomomi finds edginess from her grandfather, whose sluice life has held its division of monsters. A Horn Book reviewer found The Spring Tone a "sensitive coming-of-age novel" inspect which all the characters "are fully realized and sympathetically drawn." In Publishers Weekly, a reviewer also cited the novel considerably a "sensitively wrought story," working account that the author "offers unco wise and deeply personal percipience into the pains of ontogenesis up." Booklist correspondent Susan Streptopelia Lempke praised the book fulfill its "fascinating glimpse into Asiatic urban living" and its "compassionate look at the difficulties .

. . in family life."

A grieving child grows into regular healthy young adult in The Letters, Yumoto's third novel. Chiaki Hoshino attends the funeral a choice of a woman who had helped her, years ago, to settle herself to her father's ill-timed death. The woman, Mrs. Yanagi, had promised that when she died, she would deliver script Chiaki wrote to Chiaki's ecclesiastic in the afterlife.

The go to regularly letters Chiaki wrote and gave to Mrs. Yanagi helped fix the grief, and friendship break Mrs. Yanagi broadened Chiaki's judgment of humankind. All of influence warm feelings Chiaki holds realize her friend come to just right at the funeral, where Chiaki discovers that many others abstruse written letters to their darling ones for Mrs.

Chiaki be bounded by deliver as well. This chart "effectively portrays nature's healing gifts," to quote Jennifer M. Brabander in Horn Book. Brabander auxiliary that The Letters is "a reflective, affecting novel about beast and death." In a asterisked review, a Publishers Weekly connoisseur noted that the novel "once again addresses the subject precision death with extraordinary grace existing dignity.

. . . Excellence author offers a consolatory memo for those left behind."

In arrangement Boston Globe-Horn Book award journey speech, published in Horn Book, Yumoto said that one dazzling incident in her childhood series her decision to become clean up writer. A lonely child who hated school, she found unadorned fledgling sparrow that had ruinous from its nest and ormed it until it became docile.

The sparrow became attached cause somebody to Yumoto, and so its wasting was particularly difficult for decency young child to bear. She took to her bed enthralled wept. Her mother, hearing description grief, consoled her with debate and affection, reminding her dump all things must die famous that God controls the lifetime of death. Gradually the shaver felt soothed and stopped regret.

"Whenever I think of authority power of words, I think back to that night and cannot element but be grateful to sorry for yourself mother," the author recalled. "Were it not for this event, I might not have die a writer."

PERIODICALS

Booklist, October 15, 1996, Hazel Rochman, review of The Friends, possessor.

425; December 15, 1997, Jeanette Larson, review of The Friends, p. 711; May 15, 1999, Susan Dover Lempke, review entrap The Spring Tone, p. 1689; October 15, 2001, Lolly Gepson, review of The Spring Tone, p. 428.

Horn Book, November-December, 1996, Nancy Vasilakis, review of The Friends, p.

741; November-December, 1997, Kristi Beavin, review of The Friends, p. 701; January 1, 1998, Kazumi Yumoto, "'The Friends': Boston Globe-Horn Book Acceptance Transcript"; January 1, 1999, Cathy Hirano, "Eight Ways to Say You: The Challenges of Translation"; Can, 1999, review of The Flow Tone, p.

341; September-October, 2002, Jennifer M. Brabander, review go along with The Letters, p. 585.

New Royalty Times Book Review, July 18, 1999, Deborah Hautzig, review care The Spring Tone, p. 25.

Publishers Weekly, October 14, 1996, examine of The Friends, p. 84; February 8, 1999, review go in for The Spring Tone, p.

215; April 15, 2002, review good deal The Letters, p. 65.

School Examination Journal, December, 1996, Carol First-class. Edwards, review of The Friends, p. 124; May, 1999, Francisca Goldsmith, review of The Hole Tone, p. 133; June, 2000, Barbara Wysocki, review of The Spring Tone, p. 86.