From "Totto-Chan"

From “Totto-Chan” by Tetsuko Kuroyanagi 

“The headmaster laughed, and so did Ryo-chan. All the children laughed, too, even Totto-chan herself” (475). 

Word Count: 278

This excerpt has been very different from the many we have read so far in comparison to the other authors childhoods. In this school the children seemed to be very disciplined and the whole chapter all of them seemed to get a long very well. The children took joy in their time where they got to write music notes with chalk on the wooden floor, learned the importance of cleaning up afterwards, and not to draw anywhere else with it. In the section where they had the tea party to say goodbye to the janitor, Ryo-chan, they all came together to tell him all the things they were grateful for that he did and to say goodbye. Even though they were most likely feeling sadness on the inside they were enjoying their last moments with him, laughing together, before he had to go. It was interesting in the last sentence of this excerpt how there was a complete turnaround in the mood the author was portraying in majority of her story. The mood in the beginning encapsulated happiness of young children at school and then she mentioned how when Ryo-chan left the American airplanes entered, dropping bombs every day. The impact this must have had on what seemed like a happy life as a child must have been a complete reality check for these children. It gave a very dramatic end and twist on everything else that was read previously in the chapter. It makes me wonder what happens in the rest of her story.