The Peace Tree from Hiroshima: The Little Bonsai with a Big Story [Hardcover]

**Winner of the 2017Creative Child MagazinePreferred Choice Award **
**Winner of the 2015 Gelett Burgess Award for Best Intercultural Book**
**Winner of the 2015 Silver Evergreen Medal for World Peace**

This true children's story is told by a little bonsai tree, called Miyajima, that lived with the same family in the Japanese city of Hiroshima for more than 300 years before being donated to the National Arboretum in Washington DC in 1976 as a gesture of friendship between America and Japan to celebrate the American Bicentennial.

From the Book:
In 1625, when Japan was a land of samurai and castles, I was a tiny pine seedling. A man called Itaro Yamaki picked me from the forest where I grew and took me home with him. For more than three hundred years, generations of the Yamaki family trimmed and pruned me into a beautiful bonsai tree. In 1945, our household survived the atomic bombing of Hiroshima. In 1976, I was donated to the National Arboretum in Washington D.C., where I still live today—the oldest and perhaps the wisest tree in the bonsai museum. I would recommend this book to children who are eager to learn about history from other cultures and as a starter to get kids interested in nature. The story is personal and sentimental, but is able to cross the bridge from nature to other cultures. —Washington Gardenermagazine If you are looking to instill a bit of history and culture into your child, this is a great book. —Parenting Healthyblog …this 350-year-old bonsai had survived the atom bomb dropped on Hiroshima! No one in America knew anything about this until then. The survival of this old bonsai, which had been sitting on a bench behind a wall at the Yamaki home not far from the epicenter of the blast, was in and of itself astonishing. But just as amazing were the facts that Mr. Yamaki had not mentioned this critical fact when he donated the bonsai, that lă*