The Life of Alice Sumida: Music for Alice by Allen Say

Music for Alice is based on the life of Alice Sumida, a Japanese American woman forced to leave her home in Seattle to live in an Oregon internment camp during World War II. Allen Say presents a documentary style retrospective of this dark period for many Japanese Americans.

Say weaves the theme of dance throughout the narrative. When we meet Alice, she is an imaginative young farm girl in California who loves to dance, "Often I wished Daddy's tractor would turn into a coach and take me dancing, but it only made noise and dust."

As a young adult, she marries a kind man named Mark, who is a savvy seed salesman. Shortly after their marriage, the newlyweds move to Seattle. Without warning, the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor spins their new life together into a world of darkness. Alice and Mark check in at an assembly center in Portland where they are faced with the option of serving as volunteer field hands for a group of wealthy Americans or reporting to an internment camp.

"Some men, who had been farmers stepped forward. Mark looked at me and I nodded. We got on the truck with them. I was the only woman."

The accompanying illustration places Alice and Mark among other field hand volunteers (all men) holding luggage and wearing haunting identification tags affixed to their chests.

Through his photographic style, Say establishes a distance between the viewer and the world of the displaced Japanese Americans; their eyes covered by dark glasses and felt hats. Those familiar with Say's compelling books for young readers may remember that he used a similar representation of identification tags through a row of abandoned children in his first book on the internment process, Home of the Brave.

Say's illustrations furnish the visual life of the narrative. The images illustrate times of loss and hardship through gray-blue darkness and burst with color as the Sumida's lives improve. Eventually, the couple starts a farm of their own in the desert terrain made available through a government loan. While Alice and Mark receive a break of sorts, the work is hard and taxing. In time, Mark emerges as a respected botanist. This leads to a beautiful and bountiful harvest of gladioli.

In this stunning narrative accompanied by captivating imagery, Say opens a door for discussion between parent and child (or teacher and child) based on a true account of life as an interned Japanese American during World War II.