All the Ways Home by Elsie Chapman
Published by Feiwel & Friends on May 28th 2019
ISBN: 1250166799
Pages: 224
Goodreads

All the Ways Home is Elsie Chapman’s beautiful middle grade fiction debut novel. After twelve-year-old Kaede Hirano’s mother dies in a tragic car accident, he is left to live in Vancouver with a grandfather he barely knows. Kaede spends his tumultuous seventh grade year in middle school acting out his anger and grief, isolating friends, and risking repeating the grade. When Kaede is sent on a three-week trip to Japan to spend time with his absent father and older half-brother, he embarks upon a journey of what it means to find home. The skill with which this novel is written makes it a pure joy to read. The descriptions of Japanese city life are vivid, transporting the reader to a different culture yet maintaining feelings of comfort and familiarity. Told through Kaede’s articulate and insightful voice as well as his journal entries, the reader is quickly endeared to Kaede, and cheers him on throughout his journey. All the Ways Home is a tender and heartfelt novel that addresses the complexities of grief, forgiveness, acceptance, what it means to be family, and what it means to find home.

Reviewed by Jennifer Benham, Prince Memorial Library, Cumberland