There’s a really shocking story in the collection Monokuro Kinderbook by Kan Takahama where she talks about how her friends were throwing her a surprise birthday party, and while they were watching TV the broadcast was interrupted by the announcement of the planes flying into the World Trade Centers. The party atmosphere pretty much dried up and vanished. It was something I wasn’t expecting from the story, and it was truly amazing how powerful and sobering the reaction was even halfway around the world, and how much of an impact the story had when I read it years after it was written. I still think of it frequently.