Toshi Maruki's challenge to deliver the horror of the atomic bomb to young readers largely succeeds. Certainly this is not a book which all parents will approve: the illustrations, while artfully rendered and not explicitly grisly, are nonetheless indelible settings of terror and death. Maruki could do no less, of course, but younger readers might best have sensitive adults ready for their questions and emotional responses.

The accompanying prose is similarly distanced from the exploitative detail, but also speaks openly about injury, death, terror, and grief. The description of the child's skull slowly rejecting shards of glass over the many years which follow will stay with me.

In terms of imagery and detail of this historical tragedy, it is more explicit than a popular book like Sadako and the Thousand Paper Cranes, but much less so that the Barefoot Gen graphic novels, and many degrees gentler than John Hersey's classic historical documenting, Hiroshima. I recommend all of these for school-age readers. 

What we have, then, is an extraordinarily artful and vibrant work of one of the most horrifying experiences of the 20th century. Maruki's hope was to see nuclear weapons eliminated; one may hope that images from works like this may inspire the next generation to do just that.