Starred Review ALA Booklist (Thu Apr 01 00:00:00 CST 1993)

Starred Review Mieko, a young Japanese girl, loves to paint and wants to be an artist when she grows up. Her art teacher has told her that she was born with the fifth treasure, beauty of the heart, which flows into her hands and makes her drawings beautiful. But when the bomb drops on Nagasaki, her life is changed forever. A piece of glass cuts her hand, leaving a terrible scar, and suddenly Mieko is convinced that she will never paint again--that she has lost the fifth treasure forever. She is sent to her grandparents' house in the country to recuperate, but she can't get over her anger, sadness, and sense of loss. Other children tease her about her scar, and she withdraws further into her shell of self-pity. One day, she meets Yoshi, a girl her age. Yoshi is a good friend and eventually convinces Mieko not only to come back to school, but also to enter an art contest. With the encouragement of her friend, Mieko at last overcomes her unhappiness and even finds that her precious fifth treasure has come back. Set against the backdrop of postwar Japan, the story conveys a wonderfully delicate sense of Japanese people, customs, and beliefs. Coerr has created an intriguing and beautifully told tale whose strong message about friendship, self-confidence, and hope is inspiring without being smarmy. (Reviewed Apr. 1, 1993)

Horn Book (Thu Apr 01 00:00:00 CST 1993)

Injured during the bombing of Nagasaki, ten-year-old Mieko is sent to her grandparents' farm to recuperate. Despondent and self-conscious about her disfigured hand, Mieko is unable to paint word pictures--her favorite, most treasured pastime. With the encouragement of her grandparents, her new friend Yoshi, outspoken Aunt Hisako, and the healing of time, Mieko overcomes her bitterness and enters the school calligraphy contest with renewed hope. The poignant story, simply told, brings the painful struggle to life.

Kirkus Reviews

The Japanese calligrapher's four treasures'' are brush, paper, inkstick, and inkstone; thefifth'' is a beauty of heart informing the brushstrokes and bringing word-pictures to life. It is this that Mieko, at ten a talented student of the art, fears she has lost after her hand is injured in the atomic blast that destroyed Nagasaki. Bitterly ashamed of her disfigured hand (and soul), overwhelmed by homesickness (she's been sent to her grandparents in the country), Mieko is most despondent because she can no longer paint. In time, the encouragement of her elders—and especially of a gentle new friend—help draw her out of her pain and isolation and she begins to paint again. As in Coerr's well- loved biographical Sadako and the Thousand Paper Cranes (1977), the horrors of the bombing are not dwelt on here; again, the subtler underlying menace is a child's vulnerability to war. In contrast to Sadako's valiant, doomed struggle, Mieko's fictional experience is one of healing and renewed hope, expressed in the same quiet, economical prose. Since the stakes are not as high—Mieko is never in mortal danger—the story is less stirring. Still, this has its own message about the paradoxical fragility and resilience of the human spirit. Calligraphy by Cecil Yuehara not seen. (Fiction. 8- 11)"

School Library Journal

Gr 3-5-- The four treasures of traditional East Asian calligraphy are brush, inkstick, inkstone, and paper. The ``fifth treasure,'' as Mieko's art teacher has told her, is beauty in the heart, which breathes life into writing word-pictures (characters). Mieko lived in a village outside Nagasaki when the atom bomb was dropped. Flying glass badly damaged her writing hand and now, a few months later, she has been sent to live with her grandparents. Ashamed of her scars and certain she has lost the fifth treasure, Mieko withdraws into herself, rejecting school and her grandparents' efforts to help her heal psychologically. It is the subtle, beneficial influence of her new friend, Yoshi, and her overbearing aunt that helps Mieko overcome her fears and start to face life again. The child's inner and outer conflicts are believably handled, and readers will identify with her struggle towards normalcy after trauma. Much of the plot is obvious, but satisfying. The meeting with Yoshi's aunt is especially heavy-handed. With the plot unfolding in the months immediately after surrender, with Tokyo in ashes, rationing for nearly a decade, the collapse of the economy, and U. S. occupation forces just settling in, the fact that she blithely orders (and receives) luxury writing paper is a strain on credibility. Otherwise, this is a warm, sensitive, and well-written story with wide appeal. --John Philbrook, San Francisco Public Library