A Korean American girl learns the history of the gold dress she plans to wear in a talent show in this picture book.
Hannah is anxious about her Korean dance performance for her school talent show. A huge worry is her ostentatious peach-and-gold dress: “It was too different. Too Korean.” Noticing her discomfort, her mother tells her the story of her great-grandmother’s hanbok fabric business in Korea. The woman had to flee North Korea during the war. She needed to bring her fabrics with her but could not carry many bags; instead, she wrapped hanbok silks around her body under her coat, including a peach-and-gold one. Before moving to America, she gave the new store owner in Seoul instructions never to sell the peach-and-gold hanbok unless a girl named Geum Chun requested it. When Hannah was born, her great-grandmother gave her a Korean name—Geum Chun—so that she could eventually claim the dress. Armed with this knowledge, Hannah dazzles at the talent show. While questions remain—why did Hannah never learn this secret before?—the emotional arc of Paik’s story is neat and the message affirming for children seeking connections with immigrant histories that feel remote. Lin Park’s acrylic paintings offer detailed, realistic portraits of Hannah, her mother, and the bright silk fabric and sketchier pictures of the historical narrative. The titular dress is rendered in stunning gold paint.
An engaging, accessible narrative of immigration, resilience, and connections between generations.Pub Date: May 24, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-954109-11-7
Page Count: 34
Publisher: Imagilore Publishing
Review Posted Online: April 16, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2021
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Categories: CHILDREN'S SOCIAL THEMES | CHILDREN'S CONCEPTS | CHILDREN'S GENERAL CHILDREN'S
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Rabe follows a young girl through her first 12 days of kindergarten in this book based on the familiar Christmas carol.
The typical firsts of school are here: riding the bus, making friends, sliding on the playground slide, counting, sorting shapes, laughing at lunch, painting, singing, reading, running, jumping rope, and going on a field trip. While the days are given ordinal numbers, the song skips the cardinal numbers in the verses, and the rhythm is sometimes off: “On the second day of kindergarten / I thought it was so cool / making lots of friends / and riding the bus to my school!” The narrator is a white brunette who wears either a tunic or a dress each day, making her pretty easy to differentiate from her classmates, a nice mix in terms of race; two students even sport glasses. The children in the ink, paint, and collage digital spreads show a variety of emotions, but most are happy to be at school, and the surroundings will be familiar to those who have made an orientation visit to their own schools.
While this is a fairly bland treatment compared to Deborah Lee Rose and Carey Armstrong-Ellis’ The Twelve Days of Kindergarten (2003), it basically gets the job done. (Picture book. 4-7)Pub Date: June 21, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-06-234834-0
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 4, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2016
Categories: CHILDREN'S CONCEPTS | CHILDREN'S SOCIAL THEMES
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BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Reinvention is the name of the game for two blobs of clay.
A blue-eyed gray blob and a brown-eyed brown blob sit side by side, unsure as to what’s going to happen next. The gray anticipates an adventure, while the brown appears apprehensive. A pair of hands descends, and soon, amid a flurry of squishing and prodding and poking and sculpting, a handsome gray wolf and a stately brown owl emerge. The hands disappear, leaving the friends to their own devices. The owl is pleased, but the wolf convinces it that the best is yet to come. An ear pulled here and an extra eye placed there, and before you can shake a carving stick, a spurt of frenetic self-exploration—expressed as a tangled black scribble—reveals a succession of smug hybrid beasts. After all, the opportunity to become a “pig-e-phant” doesn’t come around every day. But the sound of approaching footsteps panics the pair of Picassos. How are they going to “fix [them]selves” on time? Soon a hippopotamus and peacock are staring bug-eyed at a returning pair of astonished hands. The creative naiveté of the “clay mates” is perfectly captured by Petty’s feisty, spot-on dialogue: “This was your idea…and it was a BAD one.” Eldridge’s endearing sculpted images are photographed against the stark white background of an artist’s work table to great effect.
The dynamic interaction between the characters invites readers to take risks, push boundaries, and have a little unscripted fun of their own . (Picture book. 5-8)Pub Date: June 20, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-316-30311-8
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: March 29, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2017
Categories: CHILDREN'S SOCIAL THEMES
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