It seems that 12-year-old Angela Kato is being shipped down to Los Angeles for the summer to live with her grandparents, Grandma Michi and Gramps. She suspects her being sent away has something to do with an estrangement she senses between her parents. She's very worried they're in the process of splitting up. But, of course, no one will say anything.

Angela is third generation Japanese, which basically means pretty much fully American with little understanding of her Japanese heritage other than a few words or phrases. Her grandparents, of course, are still well steeped in their Japanese culture, and Angela has to figure things out for herself, because it's not part of the culture to provide clear lessons. Just not done.

Angela's grandparents have a wedding business. Gramps does floral arrangements, and Grandma Michi and her daughter, Aunt Janet, make arrangements of origami cranes. There must be exactly 1001 cranes in the arrangement for each wedding. Naturally, once Angela arrives, she is set to folding paper cranes.

The problem with folding origami cranes is that it takes quite a lot of time (but a super good meditative activity). Also, Grandma Michi grades the cranes: 'A', 'B', 'C', 'D'. She goes through Angela's work at the end of each day and places the cranes into appropriate piles. This is very discouraging at first, but eventually Angela becomes pretty competent and has fewer and fewer of her cranes delegated to the 'C' and 'D' piles.

Well, lots of other things go on. Angela meets up with some local teenagers and a sick neighbor. She gets slightly more insight into the ways of her parents and grandparents. And all the crane folding turns out to be therapeutic. It's a bit of a coming of age experience for her.

But, of course, for me, it's all about the cranes. After a visit to Hiroshima some 15 years ago, I took up folding origami cranes. I've folded thousands of the damn things. My son and daughter-in-law, who met in Japan while they were over there in the JET program, wanted cranes for their wedding. Naturally, I was delegated to doing much of the folding. We had showers of white cranes along the aisles. We had little colored cranes nesting in the table centerpieces. We had mid-sized cranes holding the place cards indicating people's seating. Cranes galore. I'm grateful that my daughter-in-law didn't go through my cranes and delegate them into piles, 'A', 'B', 'C', and 'D'. Nope, bless her heart, she was just grateful for the oodles of cranes—yes, some a bit disfigured—that helped make her wedding one of the most special events ever.

Anyway, this is a great book. Probably worth 4 *s at a minimum. Y'all should definitely read it. ( )

Think this is young adult - middle school - genre, so not sure how it got on my list, but well worth it.
Not allowed to complain, parents divorcing, staying with grandparents, learning about neighbors. I learned much about Japanese-American family culture and especially about the tradition of 1001 Cranes.
Read in 2011 ( )

This story is about an Asian girl named Angela after Angela Davis who goes to live with her grandmother and aunt while her parents are getting divorced. Through being given the responsibility of working for the family business making crane displays for weddings, she learns to become more independent and accept change and the "loss" of the nuclear family unit, and learns about different models of family. SERIOUSLY liked this book! Also deals with boy problems without making them central.

Twelve-year old Angie, a Japanese-American, is forced to spend the summer with her grandparents in LA while her parents work through their divorce. While there, she learns more about her heritage, lessons about family, gets her first boyfriend, and folds paper cranes for weddings. ( )