Reviewed by: Orchards Karen Coats Thompson, Holly . Orchards; illus. by Grady McFerrin . Delacorte, 2011. [320p]. Library ed. ISBN 978-0-385-90806-1 $20.99 Trade ed. ISBN 978-0-385-73977-1 $17.99 E-book ed. ISBN 978-0-375-89834-1 $17.99 Reviewed from galleys Ad Gr. 7-10. After a bipolar and bullied classmate, Ruth, commits suicide, Kana is sent away for the summer to stay with her mother’s family in Japan, attending summer school and working in their orchards. Her status as half-Jewish has always rendered her an outsider among her mother’s relatives, but through the acceptance of her cousins and her affinity for the work, she eventually feels at home in Japan and works through her conflicted emotions about Ruth as she participates in the family festival to welcome the spirits of their ancestors home. Kana’s free-verse narration offers some densely visual and imagistic descriptions, but much remains to be inferred, such as what exactly Ruth’s classmates did to her and why they’ve all been sent away for the summer. At some points it seems that the adults fear the viral nature of suicide, but at others, it seems as though Kana’s exile is at least in part a rather unmerited punishment for not being a better friend or for not intuiting Ruth’s mental illness. The exploration of her survivor’s guilt mingles with detailed descriptions of daily life in Japan, which tend to take over the narrative; the poetry that walks readers through the development of the season in the orchard is substantive but not especially memorable, and the thinly rendered, rather predictable plot at [End Page 302] times seems a mere excuse for the setting. Certainly survivors need a path through grief to understanding and acceptance, and this does set that path, but in a pat, overdetermined sort of way as Kana first learns what it feels like to be an outsider and then heals by fusing newly learned Japanese and Jewish rituals of honoring the dead. [End Page 303] Copyright © 2011 The Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois