When Alex Maki of Bainbridge Island, Wash., and Charlie Lévy of Paris, France, are assigned to be pen pals in 1935, Alex is initially disappointed to learn that Charlie is a girl, and neither expects to still be writing in 1941. As they-ve grown closer, the world has darkened: in Paris, discrimination against Charlie-s Jewish family gets worse; after Pearl Harbor, Alex-s Japanese-American family is interned far from their home. In an author-s note, Fukuda (the Hunt Trilogy) says that he was inspired to write the novel after learning that Anne Frank had an American pen pal and that a subcamp of Dachau was liberated by an all-Japanese-American battalion. Drawing on these facts, the author creates a compelling juxtaposition in Charlie-s and Alex-s

Gr 7 Up-It is 1935 and Alex Maki is excited to start writing to his new French pen pal, Charlie Lévy, until he finds out Charlie is a girl. But the assignments have already been made, and so Alex and Charlie are stuck with each other. Six years later, they're still writing, though so much has changed. Japan has bombed Pearl Harbor, and suddenly everyone in Alex's close-knit community in Washington State distrusts his Japanese American family, even though he and his brother have never set foot in Japan. Charlie, meanwhile, is still in Paris, but it's a Paris no longer friendly to Jews. Then Alex and his family are taken away to a camp and Charlie stops responding to his letters. While this is a story about Alex and his friendship with Charlie, it transcends the two to tackle larger questions of racism and state-sponsored violence. Though there are numerous novels of World War II, Alex's is a fresh story of the internment of Japanese Americans and the Japanese American experience broadly. While occasionally melodramatic, the novel is grounded in meticulous historical research and deals with both internment and life on the war front. VERDICT Recommended where historical novels are popular; this one adds an important perspective to World War II fiction. Zoë McLaughlin, Michigan State University, East Lansing