Heart of a Samurai Review

Title: Heart of a Samurai

Author: Margi Preues

Publisher: Amulet Books ©2010

Summary: In 1841, a Japanese fishing vessel sinks. Its crew is forced to swim to a small, unknown island, where they are rescued by a passing American ship. Japan’s borders remain closed to all Western nations, so the crew sets off to America, learning English on the way.

Manjiro, a fourteen-year-old boy, is curious and eager to learn everything he can about this new culture. Eventually the captain adopts Manjiro and takes him to his home in New England. The boy lives for some time in New England, and then heads to San Francisco to pan for gold. After many years, he makes it back to Japan, only to be imprisoned as an outsider. With his hard-won knowledge of the West, Manjiro is in a unique position to persuade the shogun to ease open the boundaries around Japan; he may even achieve his unlikely dream of becoming a samurai.

Review: When this book first arrived in our home, I thought Amber would really want to read it.  She’s intrigued with ninjas, and ninjas are kind of like samurai…right?

Unfortunately the beginnig of the book skips over time periods with no explanation of what goes on inbetween.  Combining that with no samurai action on the pages, and it didn’t hold her attention for very long.

I however enjoyed it.  I like biographies that are told in the form of story narratives, rather than a documentary fashion, and Heart of a Samurai is based on the real life happenings of Manjiro.

It is in fact an extremely educational book about many things; whaling, as well as early American culture, and Japanese culture.

It would be an ideal book to take up with your homeschooled children as either a read aloud or assigned reading (geared toward middle schoolers).

Disclosure of Material Connection: I received the product mentioned above for free for review purposes. I was not required to write a positive review.  The opinions I have expressed are my own and this product may not have the same results for all people, please do additional research of your own when purchasing products mentioned in reviews.  Affiliate links are used in this post.

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