Aiko's Flowers

Patricia Morley is professor emerita of English and Canadian Studies at
Concordia University and an avid outdoor recreationist. She is also the
author of The Mountain Is Moving: Japanese Women’s Lives, Kurlek, and
Margaret Laurence: The Long Journey Hom

The popular Japanese art of ikebana (flower arrangement) forms the pivot
for a young girl’s emotional crisis as she struggles to understand the
meaning of tradition and the character of a grandmother she never knew.

Aiko’s mother has begun to give her lessons in flower arranging, but
Aiko is a reluctant pupil. Her arrangements, unlike mother’s, do not
look right. Aiko pricks her finger on the steel flower holder and runs
away.

A walk by the sea, a sudden brief storm, and a happy encounter with an
old woman combine to change Aiko’s feelings. The stranger helps her to
understand the interplay of sun, rain, and growing things and fills her
arms with wild sunflowers. For the first time, Aiko begins to wonder
about her grandmother, the one who taught her mother to arrange flowers,
and to feel the flowers’ relationship to earth, water, and sky.

Rui Umezawa, born in Tokyo, now lives in Toronto. Aiko’s Flowers is
his first picture book. Yuji Ando is an award-winning artist and
cartoonist. In Aiko’s Flowers his illustrations capture the rainy
season of a Japanese summer, the charm of a traditional wooden Japanese
house, the warmth of family, and the beauty of sea, sky, and flowers.
Highly recommended.