“While I was away” by Waka T. Brown is a middle grade memoir about the author’s time spent in a Japanese school one summer. Waka is in sixth grader living in Kansas, and is looking forward to her summer vacation with her friends. Her Japanese mother is unhappy with Waka’s Japanese fluency and decides to send her to Japan by herself to stay with her grandmother and go to Japanese school all summer long. The book starts with Waka’s hilarious attempts to convince her parents that she doesn’t need to go to Japan, but the bulk of the book is about Waka’s time in Japan both at school and living with her stern grandmother.

Waka’s journey to find inner strength and a connection with her grandmother is told in the first person, and you feel as if you are hearing the story directly from Waka. You can feeI what she is feeling. I was nervous that her arrival in Japan would be the start of nothing but bad experiences for her until she got more fluent, but the story focuses on both her failures and her successes from the beginning: though she makes mistakes in her speaking and writing classes, she is a star in PE, unlike in America where she is considered smart, but not athletic.

A heartfelt and at times very funny memoir of her time spent in sixth grade in Japan, this book is a welcome addition to your middle grade collection. Tweens and teens who like realistic fiction and biographies will enjoy Waka’s journey.

Reviewed by Kate Radke, Walker Memorial Library, Westbrook.