Korean Children's Day

by Ruth Suyenaga, Young Sook Kim, Young Mi Pak

A young Korean-American describes traditional activities that are a part of Children's Day in Korea, including the game yut, foods, a song and drum dance, and Tae Kwon Do.

Genres: Cultural

22 pages, Hardcover

First published March 27, 1992

Reviews

[Courtney · Rating 2 out of 5]

Korean Children’s Day is about an American boy, Jimmy, who learns about this Korean holiday through his adopted Korean friend Young Soo. Jimmy attends a celebration in honor of Children’s Day at the Korean Institute with Young Soo. There he participates in Korean customs and traditions. He experiences Korean food, dance, and learns Tae Kwon Do. Jimmy’s enthusiasm about Tae Kwon Do prompts him to ask his school teacher if the whole class can learn Tae Kwon Do. Seemingly the whole class learns Tae Kwon Do and become Tae Kwon Do Champions of their elementary school.

I think the book has good intentions of teaching Korean culture, but the story is weak. It is not very detailed oriented and the dialogue seems choppy. I think the author could have been more descriptive in their language to describe some of the Korean customs. Also I think the dialogue between characters and the narration could have been a little smoother.

A writing aspect that I noticed from this book was an ambiguous ending. The book abruptly ended with telling the reader the class became 4th grade Tae Kwon Do Champions. It does not state the details leading up to them being champions or if a competition even took place. It is left for the reader to fill in the missing blanks to get to the conclusion. One of the last lines states “You can guess the rest.” I particularly did not enjoy the ambiguous ending. I would have preferred to know about the competition leading up to the class winning. If I was to teach students about the writing aspect of ambiguous ending I could use this novel as an example. I would have students notice how the story ends and have them predict the event that may have lead up to the ending.

[Christie Suh · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is about a boy who was adopted from Korea and attends a Korean institute. For Korean Children's day, he takes one of his friends to the instutite and teaches him about his culture. It's a good book to teach a little bit about the Korean culture to children.