Nori
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- $18.99
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- $18.99
Publisher Description
"A dulcet debut capturing a touching relationship between the spirited Nori and her grandma
Ignatz nominated and MoCCA Arts Festival Award-winning cartoonist Rumi Hara invites you to visit her magical world. Nori (short for Noriko) is a spirited three-year-old girl who lives with her parents and grandmother in the suburbs of Osaka during the 1980s. While both parents work full-time, her grandmother is Nori’s caregiver and companion—forever following after Nori as the three year old dashes off on fantastical adventures.
One day Nori runs off to be met by an army of bats—the symbol of happiness. Soon after, she is at school chasing a missing rabbit while performing as a moon in the school play, touching on the myth of the Moon Rabbit. A ditch by the side of the road opens a world of kids, crawfish, and beetles, not to mention the golden frog and albino salamander. That night, her grandma takes to the Bon Odori festival to dance with her ancestors. When Nori wins a trip to Hawaii, she finds herself swimming with a sea turtle, though she doesn’t know how to swim.
In mesmerizing short stories of black and white artwork with alternating spot color, Hara draws on East Asian folklore and Japanese culture to create an enchanting milieu that Nori tries to make sense of, wrestling between the reality of what she sees and the legends her grandma shares with her."
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Kyoto-born, Brooklyn-based cartoonist Hara evokes the wonder of childhood, with equal parts precision and whimsy, in this meticulously observed debut. Noriko "Nori" Iwasaki, a rambunctious, imaginative little girl, spends her days in 1980s suburban Japan with her Grandmother while her parents are at work. She chases magical rabbits across her preschool's playfield, explores the neighborhood's ditches and shopping district, celebrates at festivals, plays with sassy local kids and the varied urban wildlife that hide around every shrub, and, in the book's longest sequence, vacations in Hawaii on a trip won at a fair. The world of adults hums away in the background, still healing from WWII; old-timers reminisce about wartime privations, and the Hawaii escapade is held up as "a symbol of peace and revival" by the neighborhood business association. But Hara always returns to Nori's private world, masterfully immersing the reader in a small child's perception, cramming panels with Richard Scarry like ramshackle houses and busy gardens, irresistible fantasy sequences, and details an ice cream advertisement, fish swimming in a tidal pool a preschooler would light on. Nori and her playmates are sketched in loose lines with pitch-perfect body language. These satisfying sunny adventures succeed at being specific to their time and place while tapping into a sense of collective young memory, leaving the reader lighter and nostalgic.