Courage doesn't mean you don't get afraid. Courage means you don't let fear stop you.- Bethany Hamilton
Over the summer one of the many great books I read was So far from the Bamboo Grove by Yoko Kawashima Watkins. This is a true account of her terrifying experience during WW2. A dominant theme in this book is courage because in her journey there were many hardships, she had to have courage and persevere. She demonstrates many types of courage in this book including emotional courage, physical courage, and social courage. To me courage means doing something despite a fear or challenge. Courage is a broad idea but you may commonly see courage when people face their fears. These can be small things but it is still showing courage. This summer sixth graders were able to read different courage related books, we had to think about how each character in all of the books face courage in different ways.
In the novel So far from the Bamboo Grove the character Yoko has to show tremendous courage. She used to live in Northern Korea but her family had been driven to leave due to the insecurity there. Korea at the time was unsafe because the Koreans were fighting for freedom from the Japanese. As an eleven-year-old…show more content… This is very important because now they do not have a parent to guide them. Yoko was just starting to settle in and get used to the new life. Abruptly, their mother died and their hardships continued. Even though Ko is old enough to lead Yoko in the rest of their journey, there are all very young and could have used their mother to guide them. This example of Courage is emotional courage. It is very emotional when a loved person has passed and even more when you are very young. Yoko is younger than I am and me and my mom are very close, I couldn’t picture a world without her. I can't imagine how much courage it took to get over her mother
