Author and journalist Kumiko Makihara will discuss the competitive Japanese school system, as well as the questions all parents face regarding education, when she introduces her memoir, Dear Diary Boy. Join New Canaan Library in welcoming Ms. Makihara on Tuesday, September 17 at 10:30 a.m. in the Curtis Gallery. This program is presented in partnership with Elm Street Books; copies of the book will be available for purchase. Please register online at newcanaanlibrary.org.

When Makihara’s five-year-old son passed the rigorous entrance exams for a top Japanese school, she assumed that the hard work had been done. But her free-spirited son failed to thrive in the highly competitive primary school while the exacting mother kept pushing him to meet the school’s requirements. At times humorous, but sometimes quite dark, Dear Diary Boy chronicles the battles between mother and son as they face the challenges of the school in their different ways. Dear Diary Boy offers a look deep inside a highly selective Japanese school and the demands it places on both parents and children, while posing universal questions of how best to educate children and what is truly in their best interests.

Kumiko Makihara writes about her impressions of life in Japan and the United States, two countries she has been traveling back and forth between most of her life. Her columns have appeared in the International Herald Tribune, The New York Times Magazine, The Washington Post and Newsweek, as well as in the books Reimagining Japan: The Quest for a Future That Works and Tsunami: Japan’s Post Fukushima Future. She previously was a reporter for Time Magazine and the Associated Press and a features editor at the Moscow Times. Her book Dear Diary Boy was published by Arcade in July 2018.