Kira-Kira is a young adult novel by Cynthia Kadohata. It received 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 Takeshima, the middle child in a Japanese-American family. "Kira-Kira" (キラ キラ in katakana) means glittering or shining. Plot summary In the early 1950s, Katie Takeshima and her family live in Iowa, where her parents own a Japanese supermarket. When the store goes out of business in 1956, the family moves from Iowa to an apartment in Georgia where Katie's parents work at a hatchery with other Japanese families. Katie's best friend is her older sister Lynn, whom Katie looks up to as the most intelligent person she knows. She cites Lynn's ability to beat their Uncle Katsuhisa, a self-proclaimed chess grand master, at his own game as an example. Katie holds close to her heart the Japanese term "Kira-Kira", which Lynn taught her. They use it to describe things that glitter in their lives. When they first move to Georgia, Lynn guides Katie around her new surroundings and teaches her to always be positive about things. In this period, Lynn is portrayed to be highly sensible and independent as she teaches Katie to save money for their parents. When Katie enters school, she has difficulty being the only Japanese-American in her class. Her grades are solid average C's, in comparison to Lynn's ongoing straight A's. When Katie is six years old, her brother Samson (known as Sammy) is born. Lynn makes a friend whose name is Amber and also grows to be a teenager, becoming interested in boys and spending more time with her friends and lesser time with Katie. Katie also notices Lynn's change in behavior as she starts dabbling in makeup and worrying about beauty. Without Lynn's company, Katie makes friends with a girl called Sylvia "Silly" Kilgore, whose mother also works at the hatchery. However, Lynn starts feeling sporadically fatigued and ill and is diagnosed with anemia. Lynn is eventually diagnosed with lymphoma, and becomes even sicker, and then her friend Amber dumps her, along with Gregg, her boyfriend. The family decides to move into a house of Lynn's choice to help her recover, which appears to work for a short time. However, Lynn relapses from distress when Sammy is caught in a metal