To be stateless, drifting between two cultures, belonging to neither one nor the other completely, creates a confounding 
challenge for finding a place called home. Such is the plight of young Japanese American teenager Amy during the tumultuous times of World War II. In Pearl, Sherri L. Smith (Flygirl) and Christine Norrie (Cheat) chronicle her dilemma amidst the shadow of war in the United States and Japan.
The opening pages introduce Amy’s great grandmother, who as an ama, dives for pearls along the shores of Honshu in Japan. The narrative then shifts and traces her lineage to thirteen-year-old Amy on the island of O’ahu, Hawai’i in 1941. One day, news of her grandmother’s deteriorating health prompts Amy to travel to Japan while her parents stay home to take care of her newborn brother. She stays at her uncle’s farm on the outskirts of Hiroshima and is drafted into translating news from American radio broadcasts for the Japanese military.
When the Japanese bomb Pearl Harbor and Amy learns of the incarceration of Japanese Americans back home, she must navigate between her dual identity as Japanese and American: “To the Americans, I was a traitor. To the Japanese, I was an American. I had no country to call my own.” In this conflicted tale of grasping one’s identity amidst the looming specter of war spanning across the Atlantic, Pearl explores themes of emigrating to one’s ancestral land, becoming estranged as an outsider between two cultures, and grappling with despair, hope, and the will to survive in the aftermath of atomic destruction.
The story falls short in developing the family dynamics between Amy and her relation to her grandmother, leaving more to be desired. While she interacts with relatives in Japan, their relationship to her fail to fully crystalize. The graphic novel’s strength lies in its picturesque visuals of the sea in deep space compositional panels ensconced in pastel hues of blue and flashbacks tinted in light gray, establishing a muted tone of melancholy and wonder. Wordless panels and speech bubbles depicting nuanced emotions and symbolic imagery imbue selected scenes with dramatic impact, conveying the affective interactions between characters and their environment.
Fantastical elements blend into the narrative and expressive artwork, which include the haunting personification and specter of death as characters struggle past the ravages of war and emotional trauma. Although lacking in secondary character background development, this graphic historical novel presents a conflicted perspective of a Japanese American caught in the socio-political throes of World War II and will complement diverse middle grade graphic novel collections to highlight this crucial period of U.S. American history.
Pearl
By Sherri L. Smith
Art by Christine Norrie
Scholastic GRAPHIX, 2024
ISBN: 9781338029437
Publisher Age Rating: 10-14
NFNT Age Recommendation: Tween (10-13)
Creator Representation: Black,
Character Representation: Japanese-American,
