Mikan is a orange-like fruit that is originally grown in Japan, and it is also what author Holly Thompson’s character, Kana Goldberg, spends her summer cropping after she and her friends are held responsible for a student’s suicide in her book, Orchards.

Thompson,  also the author of Ash and The Wakame Gathers, is a riveting and culturally based book published in 2011.
Thompson takes residence in Japan teaching academic and creative writing at Yokohama City University. Therefore, she is able to include accurate facts on the amount of Japanese culture she brings into the book.
Orchards is written in free-verse poetry form, different from what many people usually read, but it seems to be becoming more popular every year.
One of the more popular authors to use this method is Ellen Hopkins, author of Crank, Burned, Fallout, and many more. The books she has written focus on a variety of different problems that are common for many teens, and how they handle them.
The front of the book had a quote from Hopkins, admiring Orchards, “A true achievement. Stunning storytelling wrapped in remarkable poetry. Beautiful.”
And with the dark conflict in the book, something as simple as three words could change someone’s life forever. After Kana’s best friend, Lisa, says “Go kill yourself” to eighth grade classmate, Ruth, Ruth is found hanging on a tree in an orchard. She was already suffering from depression due to constant bullying at school. Kana and her friends pushed her to the edge.
Prior to Ruth being found in the orchard, Kana’s parents had decided to send her to Japan, so she could get away from her home city, New York, and reflect on what she had contributed to.
There, Kana lived with her grandmother, step-grandfather and cousins, Koichi and Yurie. The book quickly starts off with her departure on the plane to Japan, and once she arrives, she is immediately faced with conflict. Kana is a Japanese and Jewish-American who had grown up in New York. She is not familiar with the culture, and she does not speak Japanese fluently.
Kana is quickly put in school, and when Kana is not attending school, she is tending to the mikan terraces that her Aunt’s family owns. Working on the terraces is hot, tiresome, time consuming, and a chore Kana hates.
However, in the conclusion of Orchards, Kana comes to enjoy working on the terraces with her cousins as she learns to become more open to new things and to respect people for their differences. After she returns to New York, she starts blueprints to create a memorial for Ruth in the orchard.
Orchards is a book that lets its cover deceive the reader. The cover makes readers expect a heartfelt novel; however, it is not. It is a serious book filled with many hardships that people have to face based on different circumstances. Orchards shows the difficulties of losing a loved one while it also educates the reader on Japanese culture.