To the Post World War Japanese Shores with Mieko

My Mum laughed when she saw this tiny book by my bedside.

"Going back to childhood, are we?" she asked me, her eyes twinkling with mirth.

Well, Fellow Readers, let me tell you, sometimes it's good to go back to childhood, especially if you've been doing some heavy duty reading like me, flirting incessantly with Chaucer one day, Tennyson the next and T. S. Eliot off and on.

It's good to sit back, read something and not think about Freudian psychoanalysis or the meanings of fabliau, morality plays and miracle stories, the beginning of a women's college in London because of the poem you are holding in your hands, the era defining geniuses or the literary movements that changed the world.

It's good to pick up something simple, uncomplicated and just read: on the swing,in bed, after tending to the cantankerous rose bush in your garden and then sit back with the warm fuzzy feelings of friendship, hope and feeling inspired.

And if this little book, that was written to acquaint American children with the atrocities of WW II serves that purpose, why the hell not!