[CALIBK12] book review

[barbara scheifler]

    below is a review of a relatively new book that i noticed in our
local weekly paper....i checked it out of the berkeley public, as
suggested!!!.....check your local libraries for it also and then decide
on a purchase for your schools.....i think it's great for middle/high
schoolers.....many of the kids' letters are included....gives our kids
an insiders view of the camps...

....barb scheifler
    lmt retired

Books: A Librarian Who Made a Difference
by Helen Wheeler (Berkeley Daily Planet 07-31-07)

DEAR MISS BREED: TRUE STORIES OF THE JAPANESE AMERICAN INCARCERATION
DURING WORLD WAR II AND A LIBRARIAN WHO MADE A DIFFERENCE
By Joanne Oppenheim. Foreword by Elizabeth Kikuchi Yamada. Afterword by
Snowden Becker:  Scholastic Nonfiction, 2006.


Are you interested in little old white lady, self-supporting,
spinster-librarians? Do you assume much doesnít go on in their lives
beyond the spectacles and reading all those books? Well, meet ìMiss
Breed.î She took chances, risked her career and income by taking an
activist stance during World War II.

ìMiss Breedîwas the San Diego Public Libraryís first Childrenís
Librarian. She worked in the branch used by the cityís Japanese American
children. Within four months of Dec. 7, 1941, San Diego Nikkei were
forced to leave their homes, schools, jobs, and public libraries.

At the train station ìMiss Breedî distributed self-addressed post cards
to ìher childrenî and sent them packages of books and other necessities
that she purchased as she came to know their locations. She wrote about
their condition and struggled to get published in library literature.
And more.

I learned of ìMiss Breedî because recently I happened to tune into
Book-TV when Joanne Oppenheim related her experiences writing Dear Miss
Breed: True Stories of the Japanese American Incarceration During World
War II and a Librarian Who Made a Difference to an audience that
included many of Miss Breedís children and their children at the
Japanese American National Museum in Los Angeles (www.janm.org). All of
the above describes this wonderfully illustrated and written book in the
barest terms.

One of the subject headings suggested by the U.S. Library of Congress
catalogers is ìJuvenile Literature,î but it should be read by every one.
It is in the Berkeley Public Library collections.






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