Materials from Korea
A sijo, a traditional Korean verse form, has a fixed number of stressed syllables and a humorous or ironic twist at the end. Like haiku, sijo are brief and accessible, and the witty last line winds up each poem with a surprise. The verses in this book illuminate funny, unexpected, amazing aspects of the everyday–of breakfast, thunder and lightning, houseplants, tennis, freshly laundered socks.
See the review at WOW Review, Volume VII, Issue 2
When a baby sister comes along, it seems she is just too little for anything! Will she ever be big enough to play? To whisper secrets? To eat kimchee? Will she always lie there? Scream for no reason? Be so helpless and little? When a baby sister is just too little to do anything, what’s her big sister to do but wait and wait and WAIT . . . and dream about what’s to come.
These are the gifts brought across the ocean to Korea: Leather gloves. An apron with pockets like flowers. A book with pictures and simple words. What is given in return? Simple gifts like these–and so much more.
During the seventh-century, the land which is now Korea was fraught with political and religious intrigue. The country was split into Three Kingdoms, each fighting for supremacy: Silla, Koguryo, and Paekche. Besides the warring kingdoms, there are three religions in conflict: Shamanism, the ancient female-dominated faith wherein Shamanist priestesses wield great power at court, foretelling the future, performing important national rituals, and healing sickness; Buddhism, the contemplative State religion; and Confucianism, a recent import from powerful China. Written as a first-person diary, a young princess expresses her frustrations at not being able to study astronomy because she is a girl.
Twelve-year-old Kevin Kim helps Chu-mong, a legendary king of ancient Korea, return to his own time.
Jade Blossom can never go beyond her family’s Inner court. Every girl from a good family in seventeenth-century Korea must stay at home and learn to sew and work in the kitchen to prepare her for her future life in her husband’s Inner Court. Jade has other interests. She longs to take trips to the mountains and the marketplace. Jade won’t stop thinking about the world beyond the high walls of her home.
Jennifer, a Korean American, is worried that her grandmother, visiting from Korea, will embarrass her on her school’s Grandparents’ Day, but the event brings her understanding and acceptance.
In 1945, 10-year-old Sookan’s homeland of North Korea is occupied by the Japanese. Sookan watches her people–forced to renounce their native ways–become increasingly angry and humiliated. When war’s end brings only a new type of domination–from the Russian communists.
The Korean town where Yangsook lives is famous for wonderful peaches, but one year a heavy rainstorm ushers the farmers’ crop down the mountain where children eagerly eat the expensive treat.
Take a closer look at Peach Heaven as examined in WOW Review.
Fifteen-year-old Sookan adjusts to life in the refugee village in Pusan but continues to hope that the civil war will end and her family will be reunited in Seoul. Sequel to Year of impossible goodbyes.