Winifred Conkling’s Sylvia & Aki introduces an unlikely pair of friends: Sylvia Mendez is 9 years old and looking forward to starting the third grade. Her parents are leasing a large asparagus farm in Orange County, CA, and 
she will be able to enroll in the local elementary school, rather than the poor barrio school she attended last year in Santa Ana, CA. Aki Munemitsu should be starting fourth grade, but her family has been relocated to the Poston Internment Camp, leaving behind their asparagus farm in Orange County and any hope Aki had for a normal life. Both girls face heartbreaking challenges: Sylvia and her brothers are not allowed to enroll in the Westminster Elementary School where Aki attended because they are Mexican, and instead are sent to the poor barrio school down the road. Aki’s father is held in another camp away from his family and she must face an unknown number of months ahead living with 3 other families in a small cabin in the camp. But despite the cruelty and unfairness of their situations, both girls hold out hope in their hearts that things might get better and at the same time, they wonder about each other. When Sylvia accompanies her father on the long drive to Arizona to pay the rent for the farm directly to Aki’s mother, Sylvia and Aki finally meet and start a correspondence that helps both girls get through a challenging, life changing time.
The larger issues in which this gentle friendship story is placed are the internment of Japanese Americans during WWII and the beginnings of the school desegregation movement in the US. Conkling focuses much of her story on the landmark case that Sylvia’s father brings against the school board to open the schools in Orange County (and across CA) to all children, and she even includes courtroom scenes where actual testimony is dramatized for the reader. Perfectly telescoped for late elementary age readers, Sylvia & Aki is a good introduction to racism, segregation, and the power of courage to change the world, one person and one community, at a time.
- Posted by Cori