Favorite Quote or Scene in Kira-Kira

Activity Overview

Having students choose a favorite quote or scene from the book allows them to express which parts of the story resonated with them on a personal level. In this way, students are making a text-to-self connection that demonstrates their understanding of the characters and their development or the themes of the novel. Students can share their storyboards afterwards and have a short discussion about what the quotes mean to them.

Some students may end up choosing the same quote, but have different perspectives. This is always interesting for students to see and can open up a discussion as to how not everyone can read the same lines in the same way based on their own perspectives and personal experiences.

Examples of Quotes from Kira-Kira

“Sometimes, for no reason that I could see, he would suddenly stand up and clap his hands together really loudly. After he got everyone’s attention, he would just sit down again. He even made noise when he was thinking. When he was deep in thought, he had a way of turning his ears inside out so they looked kind of deformed. The ears would make a popping sound when they came undone.”

“Lynn took about two seconds to move a pawn. Uncle Katsuhisa took about fifteen minutes to move another pawn. Then Lynn moved a knight, and Uncle Katsuhisa looked stunned.”

“They talked like their mouths were full of rubber bands!”

“It was funny how so many people ignored my mother, but they were all fascinated by this little Japanese baby. Then, when he grew up, they would probably ignore him and treat him like an ant!”

“A union is when all the workers get together and fight the very people who have provided them with a job and the very people who pay the employees money to give them the means to buy a house someday.”

“He shouted out in his dream, ‘Call me Mister Takeshima!’”

“In my most humble opinion, Gregg was a little pukey. His hair looked like something you would brush a horse with.”

“She belonged to the sky, and the sky belonged to her.”

"Lynn could take a simple, everyday object like a box of Kleenex and use it to prove how amazing the world is.”

"Here at the sea—especially at the sea—I could hear my sister’s voice in the waves: ‘Kira-kira! Kira-kira!’”

“My sister had taught me to look at the world that way, as a place that glitters, as a place where the calls of the crickets and the crows and the wind are everyday occurrences that also happen to be magic.”

“I almost never slept deeply anymore--as soon as she said my name, I always sat up immediately, no matter how tired I was.”

“The blue of the sky is one of the most special colors in the world, because the color is deep but see-through both at the same time.”

“I know a lot about when I was a little girl, because my sister used to keep a diary. Today I keep her diary in a drawer next to by bed. I like to see how her memories were the same as mine, but also different.”

“Some days I think she was really miserable, because she cried a lot. In a way, I'd had to steel my heart to her crying. You need to steel yourself to a lot of things when someone in your family is really sick.”

“For everything in my life, I would ask, Why? Why didn't the Chinese lady have teeth? Probably it was because she didn't brush them enough. I asked myself why we had to move to Georgia. It was because my father needed to work at this hatchery so he could support us better. Why did I kind of like that boy? Because he was kind of cute. And why was Lynnie sick? Why? There was no answer to that.”

“I was worried that her spirit was watching me every time I cried. I was worried that if she saw me crying, she would be very unhappy and maybe she wouldn't be able to leave the earth the way she was supposed to. So even though I wanted her to keep watching me, I wished she would forget about me and never see my crying and never worry about me anymore, even if that meant I was now alone.”

“When she first died, I felt sorry about all the pills I'd given that made her feel so miserable. But now I didn't feel so many regrets. Lynn wanted her life. I thought she was willing to suffer if she could still taste her food, if she could still talk about the sea, if she could still feel a breeze across her face, and even if she still could argue with her crazy sister!”

“I watched a swatch of the sky turn red. The red spread like blood in the sea: red, red, red, and then less and less red, until there was only blue left. I squinted as the sun rose. I must have fallen asleep, because when I woke up, my father was carrying me into the house. Sam walked beside us carrying the lawn chair, which seemed almost as big as he was. Inside the living room my father laid me on my cot. “She’s gone,” he said.”

“I cried and cried. But then I had to stop. One thing about me was that when I was having a serious wish session, I tried never to wish impossible wishes. I might have wished for sixteen crayons instead of eight, but even when I was little, I never wished for a thousand crayons, because I knew a thousand different crayons did not exist. So on that forty-ninth day I did not wish Lynn could be alive again, because I knew she was gone.”

“Usually while I lay in bed, I liked to think of new things I could do for Lynnie. Maybe I could let her try my pillow to see if she liked it better. Or I could bring her a new cracker she'd never tried. Or maybe I could even find a new book that she'd never heard of and read it to her, even though she had heard of every book in the world. That night I knew that nothing I could do would make her feel better. So I lay in bed and listened to her mournful noise and didn't feel love or hate or anger or anything at all except despair.”

“On the forty-ninth day after Lynn's death I opened all the windows in the alcove, even though it was raining. I closed my eyes and tried to feel Lynn's spirit. A leaf suddenly fell off the magnolia tree and flew in the wind and hit the screen right in front of me. I believe that leaf was a sign from Lynn.”

“I didn't care if I was a genius or if I was pretty or if I was good in sports. I just liked to listen to Lynn and to talk to Bera-Bera and to eat rice candies.”

“My mother did not think mustaches were feminine. I don't know why.”

“On the forty-ninth day after Lynn's death I opened all the windows in the alcove, even though it was raining I closed my eyes and tried to feel Lynn's spirit. A leaf suddenly fell off the magnolia tree and flew in the wind and hit he screen right in front of me. I believed that leaf was a sign from Lynn.”

“My father was mild, like the sea on a windless day, with an unruffled surface and little variation.”