A 2025 GLLI Translated Young Adult Book Prize Honor Book and the first fabulous volume in a sci-fi duology, Snowglobe is set in a post-apocalyptic, post-climate-change world. Life for the lower class is cold and brutal. Most labor daily to create electricity via giant human-powered hamster wheels, except for the lucky few who live in the Snowglobe. It’s the only place on the planet with any comfort to speak of: a reality-TV, domed environment where the actors and directors live in luxury, their toasty existence beamed 24/7 around the world as the rest of the frigid globe’s sole entertainment. For everyone else, the not-quite-impossible dream is to be chosen to move into Snowglobe.

Sixteen-year-old protagonist Jeon Chobahm hopes to become a director, one of the residents of Snowglobe who edit and sculpt the round-the-clock broadcasts. But one day, right before Jeon’s birthday, the director of her favorite show invites her to take the place of its star, Haeri Goh. For unbeknownst to the public, Goh has committed suicide.

So why Jeon?

Simple. She looks like Haeri.

Somewhat surprisingly, Jeon first hesitates, clinging to her director dream. But she soon agrees. As she steps into Haeri’s heady world, she learns more and more about Snowglobe’s dark secrets. For while the actors and directors lead enviable lives, they’re killed off as soon as they’re no longer of use.

In this upper YA dystopian thriller, things aren’t at all what they seem. Of course, that’s the secret sauce to the genre, and Snowglobe more than lives up to the promise. Along the way, it addresses identity, climate change, and social class, among a number of themes.

I couldn’t put the book down, and if you’re the least bit a fan of dystopian future fiction, you won’t be able to either.

Snowglobe
Written by Soyoung Park
Translated from the Korean by Joungmin Lee Comfort
ISBN: 978-0593484975
2024 Delacorte Press

Awards: 2025 GLLI Translated Young Adult Book Prize Honor Book; Cosmopolitan Best Young Adult Book of the Year; Kirkus Reviews Best Book of the Year; Changbi X Kakaopage Young Adult Novel Award

Reviews: Kirkus Starred Review; Publishers Weekly

Read two different interviews with the author and read about her here.

You can buy a copy here* or find a copy of it at a library.

*Book purchases made via our affiliate link may earn GLLI a small commission at no cost to you.

Award-winning opera singer Nanette McGuinness is the translator of over 120 books and graphic novels for children and adults from French, Italian, German and Spanish into English, including the much-loved Geronimo Stilton Graphic Novels, as well as Tiki: A Very Ruff Year (nominated for the 2023 Eisner and Harvey Awards) and Alice on the Run: One Child’s Journey Through the Rwandan Civil War (2023 GLLI YA Translated Book Prize Honor Book, 2023 Mosaic Prize winner, 2023 Excellence in Graphic Literature Finalist and 2023 Harvey Award nominee). Accolades have also gone to her translations of Ellie in First Position (2024 ALA Top Ten Graphic Novels for Children), Magical History Tour: Vikings and Magical History Tour: Gandhi (both 2023 Excellence in Graphic Literature Finalists), Luisa: Now and Then (2019 Stonewall Honor Book; 2020 GLLI YA Translated Honor Book; YALSA’s Great Graphic Novels for Teens in 2019) and California Dreamin’: Cass Elliot Before the Mamas & the Papas (2018 Harvey Award; YALSA’s Great Graphic Novels for Teens in 2018).