八月のひかり（読みもの）

出版社	汐文社
初版年	2019年
ISBN	9784811326061
ページ数	128頁
サイズ	20×13
対象年齢	11歳から
キーワード	家族　夏休み　貧困　食べもの　戦争

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August Light

One August day, hot from first thing in the morning, fifth grader Miki hangs laundry on the porch, slices carrots and cabbage, and makes grilled soba noodles to eat with her second-grade brother Yuuki. Yuuki gulps his portion of five bites, and Miki gives him her one bite. The two of them don’t have enough to eat. They go hungry for hours, but they never tell their mother. Their father, who was once kind, quit his job and began playing pachinko constantly. Then he started hitting their mother, and when Yuuki was three, he left.

Miki and Yuuki’s mother works as a supermarket cashier, but her body is weak, and she can’t handle long hours. With little income, the family of three barely scrapes by. Miki takes her mother’s place cooking refrigerator leftovers into daily meals, but food runs low. Electricity costs money, so the family runs the air conditioner just an hour a day.

Yuuki tells Miki that at school, he’s been teased: “You’re basically living on school lunch, aren’t you?” “Do you ever take a bath?” Miki’s been told the same. Their mother was born when their grandmother was only 18, unmarried, and grew up in poverty herself. The cycle seems unbreakable. In the midst of this, Miki and Yuuki’s determination and the support of one friend of Yuuki’s and his dad, is what keeps them going. The end of the book includes the note, “In Japan today, one in seven children under 17—about 2.7 million young people—can be found living in poverty.” This novel brings their struggle to life. (Nogami)

• Nakajima, Nobuko
• Chobunsha
• 2019
• 128 pages
• 20×13
• ISBN 9784811326061
• Ages 11 +

Families, Summer, Poverty, Food, War