To learn more about Book Spotlight, read this.

Just Be Cool, Jenna Sakai, by Debbi Michiko Florence, follows middle schooler Jenna Sakai as she navigates family problems, scholarship applications, and peer relationships.

What I liked:

• Jenna works hard to expand and develop her thought processes, while never losing sight of who she is, a quality I both admire and can relate to.
• Much like Florence’s previous book, Keep It Together, Keiko Carter (read my post here), Just Be Cool, Jenna Sakai is pleasantly readable, with short chapters, good pacing, and just enough subplots to keep the reader turning the pages. This is exactly the type of story I enjoy reading when taking a break between tedious tasks, and I thank Florence for deepening my appreciation of MG contemporary as a genre.

What I learned:

• Is JANM a destination spot for nikkei living in SoCal? If so, it would be fascinating to read an academic analysis by a nikkei scholar, or perhaps an anthology of nonfiction by SoCal-based nikkei writers – especially young writers – focused on the role JANM plays in the lives and experiences of SoCal-based nikkei individuals and communities.

Questions I had:

• I love milkshakes as much as the next person, but Jenna seems to consume…a lot of them. Same with Rin. By the end of the book, I was definitely starting to worry about the effects on their health, even though they are probably both at the age when kids are relatively free to eat what they want. From a writer’s perspective, milkshakes are probably one of the quirks intended to tie Jenna and Rin together while also cementing Leigh’s diner as a key setting, but I also worry about what young readers will learn from this imagery. I remember emulating my favorite fictional characters when I was in middle school, just to feel closer to my favorite books, and though overindulging in milkshakes was never a danger for me, I could easily see a couple of young readers imitating Jenna and Rin’s weekly diner get-togethers. Is this the type of thing that keeps parents up at night?
• Is Rin’s name being pronounced correctly by most of the people around him? The question of pronunciation never really came up in the book, which I found interesting. I remember going to school with a nikkei student named Rei, but everyone around me, including Rei herself, pronounced her name “ray.” This situation makes me wonder how we, the nikkei community, have (and will continue to) come to terms with historical, cultural, and familial legacies in the face of generationally progressive language loss. For my part, I’m glad to see many nikkei youth in the Bay Area actively engaging with Japanese language and culture.

Follow-up:

• I’m excited for Florence’s next book, Sweet and Sour!