The Last Paper Crane

The haunting story of a promise made long ago ... a powerful novel set in contemporary Japan and also in 1945, Hiroshima, the day the nuclear bomb was so devastatingly dropped on the city.

A Japanese teenager, Mizuki, is worried about her grandfather who is clearly desperately upset about something. He says that he has never got over something that happened in his past and gently Mizuki persuades him to tell her what it is.

We are taken to 1945, Hiroshima, and Mizuki's grandfather as a teenage boy chatting at home with his friend Hiro. Moments later the horrific nuclear bomb is dropped on Hiroshima. What follows is a searing account of the blinding flash, the harrowing search for family and the devastation both human and physical. There is also the very moving and human story as the two teenage boys with great bravery search for and find Keiko, Hiro's five-year-old sister. But then Keiko is lost when Mizuki's grandfather has no option but to leave her in a safe place while he goes for help...Despite a desperate search in the aftermath of the bomb, where he leaves origami folded paper cranes for Keiko with his address on everywhere a survivor could be, he cannot find her...

A powerful novel that, despite its harrowing subject matter, has hope at its heart.

About the Author

Kerry Drewery is the author of the CELL 7 trilogy, the first of which was shortlisted for the Lancashire Libraries Book of the Year 2018 and has been translated into more than a dozen languages, as well as two other highly acclaimed YA novels:A Brighter Fear in 2012 (which was Love Reading 4 Kids Book of the Month and shortlisted for the Leeds Book Award) and A Dream of Lights in 2013 (which was nominated for the CILIP Carnegie Medal, awarded Highly Commended at the North East Teen Book Awards and shortlisted for the Hampshire Independent Schools Book Awards). Both were published by HarperCollins in the UK and Callenbach in The Netherlands.