by: Elenor Coerr and Ed Young

Sadako is a sad book about a little girl who was exposed to the atomic bomb when she was a baby. She is fine for a few years. Then when running on a field at her school, she collapsed to the ground. It turns out, she had been exposed to the atomic bomb, Little Boy. She was sent to the hospital, and was tested. There she met a new friend. They talked on the porch outside Sadako’s room everyday.

One morning, when her friend Kenji didn’t appear on the porch, Sadako knew Kenji had died. Then her friend Chizuko visited her, and told her to make cranes. If she made it to 1,000, she’d get better! Sadako did that until she died, when she was 12, at 644 cranes.

Picture used with permission from The Spirit of Hiroshima

This is a sad and touching book, but yet, it teaches an important lesson. It teaches that if you live the best life you can live, then you will live forever, in hearts, and in minds. Sadako tried to live, by making paper cranes. We, in the world, can try to live a long time, and try to make a difference in the world, and we can succeed. Some people fail, but succeed at the same time. Sadako failed and died, but still lives on, in everyone’s hearts. She failed, but succeeded at the same time, and is famous for that.