Halfway There: A Graphic Memoir of Self-Discovery

Gr 7 Up–Mari spent much of her young life feeling like she never completely fit in. She was born in Tokyo and raised in the U.S., but her biracial appearance and her inability to speak Japanese made her feel incomplete. She thought that spending a year abroad in Tokyo and studying Japanese would fix what she was missing, but that’s not what happened. Readers expecting a straight sequel to Mari’s previous book, Diary of Tokyo Teen, won’t find it here. Instead, they’ll find something even deeper and more powerful. The difference between a teenager visiting a country on vacation and a young woman living in a country for a year means delving past first impressions. As Mari experiences Japan and examines herself at this pivotal stage of her life, she sees things through a starker lens. When Mari learns that people in Japan judge her because she’s biracial, either thinking she’s not Japanese enough or that she’s exotic because she’s “half,” she gets frustrated and depressed. Readers will be pulled into her emotional journey through darker shades, melting word balloons, and even melting panel edges as Mari illustrates her despair on the page. But readers will also witness the colors of cherry blossoms, among other things that still manage to spark joy in her heart.