Mori learned English as a teenager, and she became comfortable enough with the language to write her books in English; in fact, she says that she felt more comfortable with English than she did with her native Japanese. Mori's books are full of imagery and symbols. In speaking about her writing style, she says that she likes for her images to speak for themselves. She stated in Something about the Author that she likes to "get to the edge of saying it all and then hold back," letting her images tell the story. It takes quite a command over the English language to achieve such precision, and Mori does it well. She complains that she never felt comfortable speaking Japanese. It was like "in the dark without a headlight."

Mori's narrative alternates between the past and the present. The story begins in the past, in March...