Sadako and the Thousand Paper Cranes Themes

The story of Sadako Sasaki is many things—an ode to optimism, an exploration of what constitutes freedom, a meditation on family—but above all, perhaps, it is a plea for peace. Sadako contracts her illness as a result of radiation poisoning from the nuclear bomb dropped on her city, Hiroshima, when she was just a baby. Eleanor Coerr tells the story of Sadako’s senseless death in order to underscore the importance of peace and nonviolence.

The…

At eleven years old, Sadako Sasaki is the eldest girl in her family and the most outspoken of all her siblings. She struggles to balance her sunny and outgoing disposition with the historical burden her family carries from the losses it suffered in the nuclear bombing of 1945. Though Sadako does not mourn her parents’ losses in the exact same way they do, she feels just as overwhelmed when she attempts to reckon with the…

When Sadako is first diagnosed with leukemia, illness is new to her. Though she knows that many people come down with the “atom bomb sickness,” no one in her family has been touched by it, and although she was a baby during the bombing, the atomic explosion “hadn’t even scratched her.” Death is a frightening prospect for Sadako, as it is for anyone, but as her stay in the hospital goes on and her condition…