DNF. I really liked the premise but the artwork did not work for me at all. It wouldn't be fair to the comic if I finished reading and gave it a low rating.

This book does an excellent job of showing the hardships of internment camps without feeling too heavy. Oftentimes difficult topics are difficult to read. I found this story to be written and presented in a way that middle grade readers can understand the events, without finding the knowledge overwhelming. At least that's how I felt reading it.

I do wish the story was longer and provided more details of events. But I also understand, this is through a child's eyes.
Topics and experiences and their importance are different, that doesn't make them less than.

The idea of what baseball, players, and teams meant to Sandy Saito and his family, is what kept him going through these events and carried into his life as an adult.

**Thank you to Kids Can Press and NetGallery for an ARC in exchange for an honest review. **

When life becomes too difficult to comprehend, we all seek some type of escape. As Sandy and his family are ripped from their homes and forced into a Canadian Japanese Internment camp. This middle-grade graphic novel does a fantastic job of providing young readers with facts about a difficult time period. Sandy begins to realize that life is a lot like baseball. His favorite sport also helps him to comprehend what is going on around him. This book will pair exceptionally well with fellow graphic novels White Bird, They Called Us Enemy, and Displacement.

Excellent but short story about a baseball-loving Japanese-Canadian during the bombing of Pearl Harbor and the subsequent internment of west coast Japanese Canadians. While Americans are likely well versed in the history of internment, the experiences of Japanese Canadians during internment is often depicted less often in literature and film. This book would be an excellent addition to collections focused on internment, WWII, and/or Canadian history.

⚾️🏚 BOOK REVIEW* ⚾️🏚
I love a good graphic novel, and this is one of them. The illustrations are absolutely magical, the writing is lyrical and gentle, and the story itself is poignant and thought-provoking. I devoured this book in one sitting and I wish it was longer. I could've read about Sandy's story forever. Everything about this book is stunning and I'm happy I got the chance to read it.

* thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for an eARC in exchange for an honest review.

This is a Historical Middle Grade Fiction based on the internment of Japanese Americans by the US Government and the Canadian Government during the WWII.

Stealing Home, takes place just before and after the attack on Pearl Harbour - and shows the kind of discrimination and persecution as well as the displacement that Japanese Americans and people of Japanese origins faced in the US and Canada.

Written for young children, to teach them about the history and their bleak situations that Japanese Americans found themselves in during the WWII. So, this is a short read, and doesn’t go much in detail; though I do wish it had.

Sandy Saito is a young boy who lived for Baseball and the Adani team that is the pride of the Japanese Canadian community. Everything changes after the attack on Pearl Harbour - the kids at his school start treating him and other Japenese kids differently, other families are soon being taken away to places unknown and the most horrific of all - his father, a doctor in his community is separated and taken to another camp while he, his younger brother and his mother have been taken to another camp.

Stealing Home is the start of talking about the atrocities that the Japanese Americans and Canadians faced by their own government and one which they haven’t ever been compensated for - but we need more books and more awareness, especially for kids who need to understand their own history.

I really enjoy reading graphic novels lately and most of them fall in 2 categories.
Either they are simple reads for children, or funny/cute storys with pretty illustrations.

This book is special though. It deals with a tragic topic, war. Specifically the war between the USA and Japan after Pearl Harbor happened. It's all told from the perspective of child.
It's a heartwarming story about family and love and what's really important in life. Books about war always make me sad, because it's such a terrible thing to have to life through for everyone, but especially as a child. This graphic novel managed to find a good balance. It's not diminishing the trauma of such an experience, but it's also not exploiting it.

I enjoying reading it as much as you can when reading a story like this but it's definitely something I will continue to think about.

This was a really quick and informative graphic novel. It explores how Japanese Canadians were forced from their homes into incarceration camps after the attack on Pearl Harbor in World War II. It follows Sandy who just wants to play baseball with his dad and watch his favorite team. But his dad is a doctor and the Japanese community needs him. Thus, the father son relationship is also a big part of the story. I think this will be really informative for its readers who might know what happened to Japanese Americans after Pearl Harbor but not much about Canada. And it’s perfect for younger audiences in terms of length. The end encourages the reader to do more research on their own. And as a fellow baseball lover I love that the overall message is that baseball is about finding your way home and creating community with those around you.

I was surprised this was the perspective of a Japanese-Canadian family, having only ever read about American internment practices, which lead me down a long Wikipedia rabbit hole. A timely story, as we as a society need to remember and come to terms with the racism the AAPI community has endured in the country/continent. Lovely illustrations as well.

An interesting addition to the Japanese internment camp memoir group. I appreciated that this book was set in Canada and shed light on the internment/relocation camps that were there. I also loved the role that baseball played in this book and the exploration of sports in helping with mental health. Great read and would recommend to students.

3.5 stars

I only recently learned of Japanese internment through George Takei's They Called Us Enemy and I didn't know this also happened in Canada! This is something this book taught me.

I think this graphic novel lays out what happened to Japanese-Canadians during World War I clearly, sensitively and in a way that the target age-group will understand. It is told through the eyes of children and does so authentically. I also enjoyed the information at the end of the book which explains the history behind the story.

What lets this novel down, however, is that the book ends rather abruptly. A baseball field is built and baseball starts to be played again properly by people in the camp. It seems such a weird place to stop as we were really halfway through the story. I know what happened afterwards as I've read They Called Us Enemy, but the children reading this might not know. What happened to the families? Do they still live there? Did it end up like what happened to the Jews in Germany? What happened to their homes? These are all questions they may have, but are never answered and I think that's not a good thing with a topic like this.

Thank you NetGalley for provinding me an eARC of this book! I really liked this graphic novel, but I couldn’t connect to it.

The art was lovely. The story was great, it made me feel angry and sad at the same time, but it also made me feel hopeful and grateful for many things I take for granted. However, it didn’t have a big effect on me. I don’t know if it’s because the characters felt flat or because of the fast paced plot.

Nevertheless, it was a good graphic novel, and I recommend reading it more for informational purposes than for fun. It did a good job portraying this awful situation that many people had to live through.

I really enjoyed the art style in this graphic novel and the story was interesting! However, this was definitely not what I was expecting!

This was a fictional story about an all too real part of American history. The art was quite good and the story itself pulled at the heart strings at times, while only once in a while falling a bit flat. Overall, this was a meaningful, real, but ultimately uplifting story about a shameful part of US history.

I loved the story and the illustrations! The story of Japanese interment camps during WWII is such an important story for all of us to hear. This one takes place in Canada, which makes it unique from other stories I have read. Until reading this book I didn't even realize that there were Japanese internment camps in Canada. The illustrations bring the story more fully to life. I wish the story was a little longer and included the story of them re-acclimating into society. Will definitely recommend to my children to read.

Stealing Home by J. Torres and David Namisato:4/5*

“Baseball is about finding your way home. It’s a metaphor for life. It was the one thing they took from us that we were able to steal back.”

I thank Kids Can Press and NetGalley for providing me with an ARC of this book in exchange for an honest review.

Stealing Home is a graphic novel that follows Sandy Saito and his family, just a small fraction of the 21 000 Japanese-Canadians who were forced to leave their homes following the Attack at Pearl Harbour. This is a story of a young boy, stripped of his house, belongings and rights, who manages to find home in his family, his new community and baseball.

The World War II Japanese Internment Camps are something that we’re egregiously left out of my public school Canadian education. While I was aware of their existence and understood them as the horrific human rights violations that they were, this is the first narrative I’ve read of someone who lived that experience.

I really appreciate the title of this book and the motif of baseball in this story. Stealing Home, both the act of stealing a base in the sport that brought Sandy so much comfort, but also the action of reclaiming a sense of belonging and companionship in a place meant to strip individuals of that.

Obviously this graphic novel, being marketed to a younger audience, does not contain any graphic details of what Japanese-Canadians endured in these camps. I think this makes it a good piece of introductory material to these internment camps for younger readers, those that will see themselves in Sandy. It is with stories like this that we can teach young people about Canadian history and begin them on a journey to learn that which they won’t be taught in school.

*Rating system for reviews is as follows:
5/5 - I would recommend this book to anyone and I plan to read it again (likely a book I would call my favourite)
4/5 - I would recommend this book to anyone
3/5 - I would recommend this book if it fit the specific genre/trope/style you were looking for
2/5 - I would not recommend this book, but I will not discourage others from trying it
1/5 - I would discourage you from reading this book

This was quite an emotional read. The story wonderfully highlights the pain of displacement within a country one calls their own, and the loss of a "home", your comfort zone. I didn't have any prior knowledge of the repercussions of the Pearl Harbour attack on the Japanese already living in the US and Canada, so this story provided a much-needed perspective on the Second World War that I haven't read about in literature.

Gracias NetGalley y Kids Can Press por enviarme una copia de esta novela gráfica a cambio de una reseña honesta.

Tristeza e impotencia, eso sentí durante toda mi lectura.
Esta novela gráfica se sitúa en la segunda guerra mundial, la familia de nuestro protagonista es enviada a campos de concentracion para japoneses/de ascendencia japonesa.

El padre es un médico cuyo tiempo está totalmente dedicado a su trabajo, es un proceso de sufrimiento el ver como la guerra de un modo u otro también separa la familia.

Recomiendo leerlo con precaución ya que puede afectar a ciertas personas, pero si te interesa leerlo, te ánimo a hacerlo.

Thank you, Netgalley, for the opportunity to read an arc version of this book!

“Stealing Home” initially had similar vibes to “They Called Us Enemy,” but the book focuses more on the child’s perspective of coping with having his family relocated forcibly, and less so with the grander reflection on human rights. The book is aptly named. Our main character loves baseball, particularly the Asahi team, and he follows them religiously. After the bombing of Pearl Harbor, our character continues to find solace in playing catch with his brother and father, even while people at school and the community begin to treat him with more animosity. It was intriguing to find a book that dropped in bits of realization and reflection on the impact of events on the adults while still focusing on baseball and light-hearted moments. Overall, I enjoyed this graphic novel and will recommend it to students, although I wouldn’t necessarily teach this text.

If you’ve read George Takei’s memoir “They Called Us Enemy”, you know how unfair life was to the Japanese-Americans after the Pearl Harbor attacks. “Stealing Home” gives us a similar glimpse but a couple of minor yet significant changes. It tells us the story of the reshuffling of Japanese-Canadians after the attacks, and it is aimed at middle-graders instead of at adults. These two changes make the grim topic appear hopeful.

We meet Sandy, a huge baseball fan, who stays with his parents and younger brother in Vancouver. After the bombing of the Pearl Harbor, life turns upside down for them. Having to leave almost everything behind after they are made to shift to transit camps in remote areas, Sandy still tries to make the best of the situation. But what he misses the most is baseball, and what finally makes him feel better is baseball’s re-entry in his life. The book also touches upon his complicated relationship with his doctor-father.

The graphics in this book are quite simplistic and sepia-toned. This helps create a nostalgic flavour to the story.
As an essential part of Canadian history, this book serves very well to enlighten modern youngsters about the travesties of the past. Thought the topic is dark, the author does his best to keep the content child-friendly. The only thing I felt could have been better was the end. While I get the point about baseball being the be-all and end-all for Sandy, I sure would have liked to know what happened next in the internment camp. The ending felt incomplete. In spite of this, I will recommend the book wholeheartedly. It is only by learning about our past that we can avoid similar mistakes in the future.

Thank you, NetGalley and Kids Can Press, for the ARC of the book in exchange for an honest review.