YA Review: Tallgrass by Sandra Dallas

Renny was a newly-turned teenager in rural southeastern Colorado when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor.  The U.S. Government built a number of relocation camps to house Japanese Americans during the war, and one of them was adjacent to Rennie's family farm.  Tensions in the small town grow as the evacuees arrive, and are heightened when a young woman is raped and murdered-- and nearly everyone suspects one of the Japanese.  This is a coming-of-age story about seeing the wider world through new eyes, similar to Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird.  Unlike Mockingbird, though, Tallgrass lacks the plot tug to pull you through the end of the novel, and I don't think most teenagers will be flocking to read it.  I enjoyed the novel, but won't recommend it to most of my high school students.  Those I would recommend it to are the students who enjoy a young adult novel with literary merit and who are willing to work their way through a book.  Tallgrass is not brain candy, and sheds light on the Japanese American internment camps that students might not know about.  The themes of Tallgrass are especially prescient when considering the events following 2001 and American attitudes toward Muslims.  A good match for this book, and a more gripping piece of literature, is Snow Falling on Cedars by David Guterson.