“This arresting work brings history to vivid life.” –Kirkus Reviews

This important work of nonfiction features powerful images of the Japanese American incarceration captured by three photographers—Dorothea Lange, Toyo Miyatake, and Ansel Adams—along with firsthand accounts of this grave moment in history.

Three months after Japan attacked Pearl Harbor in 1941, U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt ordered the incarceration of all Japanese and Japanese Americans living on the West Coast of the United States. Families, teachers, farm workers—all were ordered to leave behind their homes, their businesses, and everything they owned. Japanese and Japanese Americans were forced to live under hostile conditions in incarceration camps, their futures uncertain.

Dorothea Lange was a photographer from San Francisco best known for her haunting Depression-era images. Dorothea was hired by the US government to record the conditions of the camps. Deeply critical of the policy, she wanted her photos to shed light on the harsh reality of incarceration.

Toyo Miyatake was a Japanese-born, Los Angeles–based photographer who lent his artistic eye to portraying dancers, athletes, and events in the Japanese community. Imprisoned at Manzanar, he devised a way to smuggle in photographic equipment, determined to show what was really going on inside the barbed-wire confines of the camp.

Ansel Adams was an acclaimed landscape photographer and environmentalist. Hired by the director of Manzanar, Ansel hoped his carefully curated pictures would demonstrate to the rest of the United States the resilience of those in the camps.

In Seen and Unseen, Elizabeth Partridge and Lauren Tamaki weave together these photographers’ images, firsthand accounts, and stunning original art to examine the history, heartbreak, and injustice of the Japanese American incarceration.

A funny new fable about artistic creation and chasing fame, imagined by award-winning author Caroline Adderson, and inspired by one of Japan’s most famous haikus, “The Old Pond.”

Bashō, a 17th-century poet on an evening walk, stops to rest next to a murky old pond. Here, readers may expect he will encounter the frog that inspired his renowned poem:

Old pond—

Frog jumps in

Splash!

But before the frog came the mosquito, who smells blood: “My life?” she whines, “It could fill a book of poetry!” And before the mosquito came the lily, who perfumes the air, hoping to be immortalized in a poem. And before the lily came the carp, who flutters her tail in the poet’s face.

In a twist that would have delighted Bashō, a Zen Buddhist, the fame-seeking creatures cause only their own suffering. Instead, the inspiration for Bashō’s poem comes from a frog that only wants a morning swim. Splash!

Illustrator Lauren Tamaki, winner of the Sibert Medal, paints a memorable cast of characters with great wit and empathy. Her swirling inks bridge the story’s traditional setting and its lightly modern lesson about fame, inspiration, and art.

A funny new fable about artistic creation and chasing fame, imagined by award-winning author Caroline Adderson, and inspired by one of Japan’s most famous haikus, “The Old Pond.”

Basho, a 17th-century poet on an evening walk, stops to rest next to a murky old pond.