Kate Allen – författare

Funny, poignant, and deeply moving, The Line Tender is a story of nature's enduring mystery and a girl determined to find meaning and connection within it.Wherever the sharks led, Lucy Everhart's marine-biologist mother was sure to follow. In fact, she was on a boat far off the coast of Massachusetts, collecting shark data when she died suddenly. Lucy was seven. Since then Lucy and her father have kept their heads above water--thanks in large part to a few close friends and neighbors. But June of her twelfth summer brings more than the end of school and a heat wave to sleepy Rockport. On one steamy day, the tide brings a great white--and then another tragedy, cutting short a friendship everyone insists was "meaningful" but no one can tell Lucy what it all meant. To survive the fresh wave of grief, Lucy must grab the line that connects her depressed father, a stubborn fisherman, and a curious old widower to her mother's unfinished research on the Great White's return to Cape Cod. If Lucy can find a way to help this unlikely quartet follow the sharks her mother loved, she'll finally be able to look beyond what she's lost and toward what's left to be discovered.★"Confidently voiced."—Kirkus Reviews, starred★"Richly layered."—Publishers Weekly, starred★"A hopeful path forward."—Booklist, starred ★"Life-affirming."—BCCB, starred★"Big-hearted." —Bookpage, starred★“Will appeal to just about everyone.” – SLC, starred★"Exquisitely, beautifully real."—Shelf Awareness, starred

Japanese animation, video games, and manga have attracted fans around the world. The characters, the stories, and the sensibilities that come out of these cultural products are together called Japan Cool. This is not a sudden fad, but is rooted in manga—Japanese comics—which since the mid-1940s have developed in an exponential way. In spite of a gradual decline in readership, manga still commands over a third of the publishing output. The volume of manga works that is being produced and has been through history is enormous. There are manga publications that attract readers of all ages and genders. The diversity in content attracts readers well into adulthood. Surveys on reading practices have found that almost all Japanese people read manga or have done so at some point in their lives. The skills of reading manga are learned by readers themselves, but learned in the context of other readers and in tandem with school learning. Manga reading practices are sustained by the practices of other readers, and manga content therefore serves as a topic of conversation for both families and friends. Moreover, manga is one of the largest sources of content for media production in film, television, and video games. Manga literacy, the practices of the readers, the diversity of titles, and the sheer number of works provide the basis for the movement recognized as Japan Cool. Reading Japan Cool is directed at an audience of students of Japanese studies, discourse analysts, educators, parents, and manga readers.

Japanese animation, video games, and manga have attracted fans around the world. The characters, the stories, and the sensibilities that come out of these cultural products are together called Japan Cool. This is not a sudden fad, but is rooted in manga—Japanese comics—which since the mid-1940s have developed in an exponential way. In spite of a gradual decline in readership, manga still commands over a third of the publishing output. The volume of manga works that is being produced and has been through history is enormous. There are manga publications that attract readers of all ages and genders. The diversity in content attracts readers well into adulthood. Surveys on reading practices have found that almost all Japanese people read manga or have done so at some point in their lives. The skills of reading manga are learned by readers themselves, but learned in the context of other readers and in tandem with school learning. Manga reading practices are sustained by the practices of other readers, and manga content therefore serves as a topic of conversation for both families and friends. Moreover, manga is one of the largest sources of content for media production in film, television, and video games. Manga literacy, the practices of the readers, the diversity of titles, and the sheer number of works provide the basis for the movement recognized as Japan Cool. Reading Japan Cool is directed at an audience of students of Japanese studies, discourse analysts, educators, parents, and manga readers.

Stepping Up to the Cold War Challenge: The Norwegian-American Lutheran Experience in 1950s Japan describes the events that led to the Evangelical Lutheran Church (ELC), an American Christian denomination, to respond to General MacArthur’s call for missionaries. This Church did not initially respond, but did so in 1949 only after their missionaries had been expelled from China due to the victory of communist forces on the mainland. Because they feared Japan would also succumb to communism in less than ten years, the missionaries evaded ecumenical cooperation and social welfare projects to focus on evangelism and establishing congregations. Many of the ELC missionaries were children and grandchildren of Norwegian immigrants who had settled as farmers on the North American Great Plains. Based on interview transcripts and other primary sources, this book intimately describes the personal struggles of individuals responding to the call to be a missionary, adjusting to life in Japan, learning Japanese, raising a family, and engaging in mission work. As the Cold War threat diminished and independence movements elsewhere were ending colonialism, missionaries were compelled to change methods and attitudes. The 1950s was a time when missionaries went out much in the same manner that they did in the nineteenth century. Through the voices of the missionaries and their Japanese coworkers, the book documents how many of the traditional missionary assumptions begin to be questioned.