children’s literature

[review] Suka’s Farm by Ginger Park, Frances Park, and Tiffany Chen

~ jama ~ 10 Comments

My grandmother and I had a unique way of communicating. Our made-up language was a hodgepodge of Korean, Hawaiian Creole English (Pidgin), broken English and American slang. We stuck to simple subjects as we watched our favorite soaps or gossiped about other family members.

While in middle school, I sometimes greeted her with a simple “Ohayō” or “Kon’nichiwa,” and she would shush me, her face like thunder. Since many of my classmates were Japanese, I naturally echoed some of what they said. My mom finally explained why Grandma got upset: from 1910 to 1945 the Japanese had occupied her homeland; Koreans were assigned Japanese names and the Korean language had been banned.

I thought of her while reading Suka’s Farm (Albert Whitman, 2025), a new picture book by Ginger Park and Frances Park, set in 1941 Korea. Illustrated by Tiffany Chen, this touching story of an unlikely friendship between an elderly Japanese farmer and a hungry Korean boy warms the heart and offers a much-needed glimmer of hope for humanity.

As the story opens, we learn Kwan lives on a quiet mountainside with his artisan parents, who eke out a living by selling their woodcarvings at the Farmers Market. Times are hard as they struggle to get by with meager bowls of rice porridge for supper. One night, Kwan overhears his worried parents say they only have a handful of rice left.

When Kwan passes Suka’s Farm on his way to school the next morning, he’s reminded of his family’s struggles. He sees pear trees growing from fertile soil, and acres of cabbages, melons and wheat — yet none of these foods ever appear on Kwan’s table. That’s because the land belongs to Japan, and Suka’s Farm is off-limits to Korean boys like him.

Still, Kwan is determined to help his family and, “as if in a dream without boundaries,” he steps onto the farm and musters up the courage to ask gruff Mr. Suka for a job. Kwan respectfully introduces himself as Aoki, the Japanese name he’d been assigned by law.

Mr. Suka is dismissive and rejects Kwan’s offer of work. How could a child help him? Kwan explains he could help with the goats, begging Mr. Suka because his family is hungry. Mr. Suka tells Kwan to go to school, but just as the boy is leaving the barn, he calls him back. He agrees to let Kwan work on a trial basis.

So, the next day, Kwan arrives before dawn, bearing a gift for Mr. Suka from his parents — a carved wooden goat. Though puzzled by the gift, he thanks Kwan, then introduces him to his little herd of goats, each of which has a name. Kwan and the goats, whom Mr. Suka loves like family, become fast friends.

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[review + recipe] The Secret Gardens of Frances Hodgson Burnett by Angelica Shirley Carpenter and Helena Pérez García

~ jama ~ 13 Comments

“As long as one has a garden one has a future; and as long as one has a future one is alive.” ~ Frances Hodgson Burnett

Since The Secret Garden has always been one of my favorite children’s books, I was especially excited to see Angelica Shirley Carpenter and Helena Pérez García’s recent picture book biography about Frances Hodgson Burnett.

Learning how Burnett coped with hardship and adversity in her own life shed new light on my appreciation of the novel. Now I understand why gardens were so important to her, not only as places of beauty and inspiration, but of comfort and healing. I also found it intriguing that she had a luxurious lifestyle that was shocking by Victorian standards (a twice divorced smoker who spent time away from her children). 🙂

We first meet Fanny Hodgson as a girl who lived in “an ordinary house in an ordinary English village.” But Fanny herself was anything but ordinary because of her vivid imagination. In her world, “fairies filled the rosebushes” and “elephants and tigers prowled the lilacs.”

Her idyllic existence was upended when her father died (she was around six), and her family was forced to move to Manchester so her mother could run his store. The dull and grey city was a stark contrast to the beloved garden she’d left behind, but Fanny’s imagination sustained her, as she envisioned roses, violets, lilies and daffodils abloom in an old abandoned garden actually “filled with rubbish and ugly weeds.”

After a few years, her mother had to sell the store as businesses in Manchester failed. Short on money, Fanny’s family then relocated to a small village in Tennessee at the suggestion of her uncle, who thought her brothers could find work there. Unfortunately, they weren’t able to earn as much money as they’d hoped, so sometimes the family went hungry. Fifteen-year-old Fanny wanted to help, but there were no jobs for girls.

Undeterred, she put her imagination to work once again and invented her own job, opening the town’s first school. Her eight students paid with “cabbages, eggs, and potatoes,” and she read them Shakespeare. She also built a “secret room” in the woods behind her house, “weaving walls from branches and vines.”

There, in her cozy sanctuary, she dreamed up stories. She knew that magazines paid for stories; could she sell one of hers? She earned money for writing supplies by picking and selling wild grapes at the market. She wrote a love story and sent it out — and to her surprise, sold it for thirty-five dollars — enough to feed her family for weeks!

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nine cool things on a tuesday

~ jama ~ 9 Comments

1. Happy February! What sweet treat do you fancy today? It may be cold and wintry outside, but Stella Park’s adorable animal pictures will warm you right up. 🙂

Based in Seoul, South Korea, Stella studied media design at Dongduk Women’s University, and then worked as a children’s art teacher before becoming a full-time freelance illustrator.

Her medium of choice is colored pencils. The slower pace of hand rather than digital drawing allows her more time to reflect and enjoy the process. She’s confident in her ability to draw subjects close to her heart and finds much fulfillment doing so. She loves sharing happiness and positivity through her art via soft fuzzy textures and heartwarming details.

Earlier in her freelance career she was mainly inspired by daily life and memorable scenes from her travels. Recently, however, she’s been depicting animal characters in cozy domestic scenes — mainly dogs and cats baking, shopping, sharing meals and playing together. She’s already published a couple of books in Korea, and I hope her work finds its way into the U.S. children’s picture book market sometime soon. Isn’t her artistic sensibility perfect for it? 🙂

For lots more, visit Stella’s Website and Instagram.

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[rising review] Still There Was Bread by Lisl H. Detlefsen and David Soman

~ jama ~ 7 Comments

Imagine the heavenly aroma of homemade bread baking in the oven as you anticipate biting into a soft, warm slice slathered with butter and honey. Nothing else says love and comfort in quite the same way.

In Still There Was Bread (HarperCollins, 2024), Lisl H. Detlefsen and David Soman celebrate intergenerational connections and the joy of sharing a treasured recipe that can sustain a family through good times and bad.

As this heartwarming story opens, Little Pickle excitedly greets his nana, who’s come to teach him how to make their special family bread. It’s the same recipe for “Nana rolls” his mother learned from her grandmother when she was his age.

As they move through each step, Nana compares their process to how her nana made the rolls a long time ago. First, Nana and Little Pickle gather all the ingredients (eggs, milk, flour, oil, sugar, salt, yeast, water). While theirs came from the grocery store, Nana’s nana “had to collect eggs from the chicken coop and milk a cow to get what she wanted.”

Next, Nana shows Little Pickle how to preheat the electric oven, explaining that her nana baked in a woodburning stove, using the “By guess and by gosh” method. While they can easily combine all their ingredients in a stand mixer, Nana’s nana mixed the dough with a wooden spoon. But there are a couple of things they do the same way: knead the dough by hand, then place it in a big bowl before covering it with a damp towel.

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[review] Blue by Nana Ekua Brew-Hammond and Daniel Minter

~ jama ~ 21 Comments

“Blue skies smiling at me, nothing but blue skies do I see . . . ” ~ Irving Berlin

Blue likes me. It’s always been there, coloring my life with good things since childhood: my first Schwinn bike, Island of the Blue Dolphins, fountain pen Quink, favorite pearl bracelet, the sparkling azure of the Aegean one summer.

At age 9, I saw Elvis filming “Blue Hawaii” alongside the pineapple fields. He was driving a baby blue convertible. The first time I met Len in London he was wearing a navy blue sweater. These days, I sip Darjeeling in a Blue Calico teacup, delighted to spot the first bluebird every spring.

Blue just knows how to make an impression. From the cozy comfort of broken-in jeans to the bright optimism of a clear autumn sky, blue touches us all in ways ordinary and profound.

But now I must confess something. Until I read BLUE: A History of the Color as Deep as the Sea and as Wide as the Sky by Nana Ekua Brew-Hammond and Daniel Minter (Knopf BFYR, 2022), I knew very little about blue’s fascinating history, origins, and cultural significance. Imagine my surprise when this book magically appeared in my mailbox one day — simply out of the blue (thanks for the gift, Miss T.)! 🙂

Brew-Hammond begins her captivating narrative by citing how elusive and mysterious blue actually is. It’s “all around us,” in the sky and sea. Yet we can’t touch the sky and when we try to cup the sea, its blueness disappears. We may crush iris petals for a brilliant shade of blue, but when we add water, the color fades away.

But then blue appears in the strangest places, discovered throughout history in unexpected ways.

Blue rocks called lapis lazuli were mined as early as 4500 BC in Afghanistan. The ancient Egyptians used the stones to make jewelry and charms to ward off evil, and by 44 BC they (including Queen Cleopatra VII) applied a bluish mixture around their eyes made from ground lapis lazuli grains, plants and animal fat.

In another 600 years or so, artists began painting sculptures, walls, and canvases with blue made from the crushed rocks. Since this paint was expensive to produce, only the wealthy could afford it. This high-demand luxury prompted scientists, merchants, and dyers to search for more sources of blue.

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