Sarah Benwell's The Last Leaves Falling-- USBBY Outstanding International Books List Award Winner for 2016

Sarah Benwell's The Last Leaves Falling-- USBBY Outstanding International Books List Award Winner for 2016

Benwell, S. (2015). The last leaves falling. [Kindle Version]. Retrieved from Amazon.com

            The USBBY Outstanding International Books List is disseminated yearly by the United States Board on Books for Young People (USBBY).  The list is an effort to bring attention to diverse books representing various nationalities and cultures internationally.  Selected books focus on children and young adult books from pre-school through grade 12 accurately representing the lives of children from other countries and exhibit “ a distinct cultural flavor” (USBBY, 2016).  On the list for 2016 is Sarah Benwell’s The Last Leaves Falling, a young adult novel about a Japanese teenager stricken with rapidly progressing Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS).

In Benwell’s debut novel, published by Random House Children’s Publishers UK, readers are introduced to 17 year old Sora, who lives in Japan.  While it is not immediately evident that the protagonist is Japanese, the fact becomes rapidly apparent when the professional baseball players Sora idolizes are addressed by foreign names.  In fact, the entire tone of this novel carries out similarly to books by John Green or David Levithan as Sora could be any teenager, anywhere.  He has the same fears, same hopes, and same dreams as the average teenager with the exception that he has been one of the few young people diagnosed yearly with rapidly-progressing ALS.  Feeling set aside from his mother, ostracized by the faculty at his high school, and embarrassed to be seen in his wheelchair, Sora strikes up the courage to create an account on the popular Japanese teen chat site, KyoToTeenz.  The source of this new-found effort to mingle with other teens are the last words of ancient Japanese samurai preparing to commit hari kari or the ritual suicide of a Japanese warrior, presented to him in a slim volume by his psychiatrist.  While the subject matter of suicide committed by the ancient Japanese seems bleak, Soro grasps that the words are timeless, encouraging one to make the most of their lives, no matter how short.

            I feel that Benwell’s novel deserves the OIB List Honor although I wish it would have come with a trigger warning; I had no idea that Sora was going to commit suicide at the end of the novel.  As reflected in the Kirkus Review in 2015, it is the “references to samurai culture and snippets of poetry (which) will leave readers at peace with the drifting ending”.  U.S. audiences should be introduced Benwell’s writing as it demonstrates that teenagers are basically the same no matter where you are.  Sora’s love of baseball, his need for understanding friends, and his means of information seeking on the Internet are common trends around the globe.  Not only do the author’s words hold weight with young adults, it also hold weight with all age groups as we all fear death and the unknown.

The Last Leaves Falling by Sarah Benwell- Kirkus Reviews. (2015, March). Kirkus Reviews. Retrieved from https://kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/sarah-benwell/the-last-leaves-falling

USBBY. (2016). USBBY  Outstanding International Books (OIB) List. Retrieved from http://www.usbby.org/list_oibl.html