For the visual novel, see Kirakira .

Kira-Kira is a young adult novel by Cynthia Kadohata. It won the Newbery Medal for children's literature in 2005. The book's plot is about a Japanese-American family living in Georgia. The main character and narrator of the story is a girl named Katie, a member of the Japanese-American family."Kira-kira" (きら きら in hiragana) means sparkling, glittering, or shiny.

Plot summary

At the beginning of the story, Lynn taught Katie the word Kira-kira and she uses it to describe everything meaning "glittering". Her older sister Lynn (whom she calls Lynnie occasionally), and their parents are living in Iowa and own a unique Asian supermarket. When the store goes out of business, the family moves to an apartment home in Georgia where Katie's parents can work at a hatchery with two other Japanese families. Lynnie is Katie's best friend who was known for being remarkably intelligent—she can beat her Uncle Katsuhisa, a self-proclaimed chess grand master, at his own game.

As the plot progresses, Katie enters school, having difficulty being the only Japanese-American in her class. Her grades are solid C's, in comparison to Lynn's consistent A's. Lynn becomes friends with a popular girl, Amber, whom Katie dislikes immensely, and starts becoming interested in boys, often dropping Katie to go hang out with people her age. Katie eventually becomes friends with a girl named Silly Kilgore, who she meets while waiting in the car at her mother's job. Silly's mother backs having a union at the plant to fight for higher wages and better working conditions, though Katie's mother opposes it.

In between, Lynn becomes sick with anemia. Amber (who Katie thought was phony anyway) dumps her as a friend. Lynn becomes even sicker. Her parents buy her a house that Lynn gets to choose to make her feel better. The house seemed to be curing Lynn, until Sammy gets caught in a metal animal trap on Mr. Lyndon's (owner of the hatchery) vast property during a picnic one day, distressing her.

Lynn slowly progresses to become blank and irritable. Eventually her parents told Katie that Lynn has lymphoma. When Katie looks lymphoma up in the dictionary she discovers that Lynn could die.

The year Katie is eleven, Lynn dies, alone on New Year's Day, when Katie goes outside for a break shortly after caring for her. After her death, Katie realizes why Lynn had taught her the word kira-kira; she wanted to remind her to always look at the world as a shining place and to never lose hope though there might be harsh huddles in life.

Several weeks later, Katie's usually calm and restrained father breaks into an angry rage after seeing Sammy struggle with his limp. He takes Katie and goes and wrecks Mr. Lyndon's car, an act which shocks her. Later on, he goes to Mr. Lyndon and owns up to what he did, resulting in him getting fired. Katie is appalled that her father is now unemployed, but he tells her that there is another hatchery opening up in Missouri, where the family will likely move next. Soon after, Katie's mother attends a pro-union meeting at the Kilgore house. One of the things that the union wanted to achieve was having a three-day grief leave for families handling tragedy. Though Katie's mother knows it's a little late for their family, if she voted for the union, it wouldn't be too late for the next family suffering.

Later, a little bit after the holidays, Katie's parents attempt to cheer the family up by taking them all on a wonderful, beautiful vacation. Katie recommends California because that is where Lynn would have wanted to go; California is where the sea she loved is and it is where Lynn wanted to live when she got older. The family arrives and while Katie walked on the beach, she could hear Lynn's voice in the waves: "Kira-kira, kira-kira".